Biohackers Creating Open-Source Insulin
I worked in diabetes for a decade so thought I'd chime in. This is an admirable project with very low prospects of making a difference in the lives of people with diabetes. I don't doubt this group will be able to show "success" in the form of simple clinical results.<p>I have the highest doubts that they'd have the resources to do the broad-based clinical trials required to go to market.<p>Look up "Eroom's Law" which is "Moore's Law" spelled backwards: <a href="http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v11/n3/fig_tab/nrd3681_F1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v11/n3/fig_tab/nrd3681_F1....</a><p>Basically, the increases in pharma regulation means it takes longer and gets more expensive to create a new drug each year.<p>This is a cool science project, but the reporting around it is sensational and not helpful to the millions of people with diabetes who have their cranks yanked regularly about miracle cures, cost-saving fantasies, etc.<p>To address some raised in sub-threads:<p>+ You can get extraordinarily cheap drugs in India, the rest of the developing world, and in parts of Europe. The "greedy" drug companies adjust pricing to what local markets can bear. So instead of letting poor people die en masse they mark the drugs down and pass the cost onto the developed world. Fair trade IMO.<p>+ The reason there are so few generic insulins is that they are hard to make consistently enough to please the FDA and European regulators. Companies like Teva and Perrigo are multi-billion dollar manufacturers of generic drugs who would love to get get into this game, but as noted, biosimilar drugs, especially ones as powerful as insulins, are a lot harder to copy than aspirin.