Scientist Bought Insulin Patent for $1, Saying 'It Belongs to the World'?

On June 12, 2024, a Reddit post on the r/BeAmazed subreddit claimed that, in January 1923, Frederick Banting bought his insulin patent for $1, saying, “Insulin doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the world.” As of this writing, the submit has obtained round 23,000 upvotes. 

The alleged quote has circulated extensively for years. The World Well being Group’s Fb web page shared a picture that includes it on June 11, 2024. U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, posted an abridged model on X in 2019. The quote additionally seems in quite a lot of revealed books and scholarly journal articles. 

Regardless of the quote’s prevalence throughout several types of media, Snopes discovered no proof that Banting, the Canadian scientist who received a Nobel Prize for locating insulin, ever mentioned it. Nevertheless, it’s true that Banting and two colleagues bought their patent for the lifesaving drug for simply $1 in 1923. As such, we charge this declare a “Combination” of reality and falsity.

The unique supply for the quote seems to be a youngsters’s biography of Banting titled “The Discoverer of Insulin: Dr. Frederick Banting,” written by I.E. Levine and revealed in 1959, 18 years after Banting died in a airplane crash. Neither the quote nor any variation thereof seems in any of the sources cited within the bibliography on the finish of the guide.

The quote additionally doesn’t seem in any of the biographies of Banting written for adults, resembling Michael Bliss’s acclaimed “Banting: A Biography,” or in any professional media protection of Banting from both earlier than or after his demise. As such, the likeliest rationalization for the origin of the quote is that Levine, the writer of biographical books for youngsters, used inventive license to think about one thing Banting might need mentioned.

The main points of Banting’s sale of the patent for insulin, however, are well-documented and will be substantiated. 

The patent’s purchaser, the College of Toronto, has made digital scans of the unique patent assignment document obtainable on-line. The quantity the College of Toronto paid Banting and his colleagues Charles Herbert Finest and James Bertram Collip for the patent, $1, is clearly famous on the doc’s first full web page. 

Eagle-eyed readers would possibly word that the project doc is dated Dec. 19, 1922, not 1923. The doc’s cowl sheet explains why 1923 is the yr usually given for the sale: The switch of the patent from Banting and his colleagues to the College of Toronto was not formally recorded within the Ottawa Patent and Copyright Workplace till Jan. 1, 1923, so the patent technically remained within the three scientists’ names till then.

In line with the Financial institution of Canada’s Inflation Calculator, that $1 in 1923 could be price round 17.46 Canadian {dollars} ($12.70) in 2024 — a considerable enhance by way of % change, however nonetheless a remarkably low worth for the patent for a drug of vital significance.

What in regards to the purpose Banting and his colleagues determined to promote the insulin patent for thus little cash? In an article revealed within the Journal of Medical Investigation in 2021, diabetes researchers Gary F. Lewis and Patricia L. Brubaker defined the rationale for the sale, which was extra sophisticated than the easy altruism instructed by memes about Banting.

In brief, the sale was half of a bigger settlement between the scientists, the College of Toronto and U.S. drug firm Eli Lilly meant to ramp up manufacturing of the drug with the intention to meet demand as shortly as doable. As a part of the phrases of the settlement, Eli Lilly dedicated to licensing insulin from the College of Toronto and manufacturing and distributing the drug freed from cost to sure hospitals for one yr.

After that yr, Eli Lilly was left with an efficient monopoly on U.S. rights to the drug, which it was legally free to revenue from. In line with Lewis and Brubaker, within the first yr the corporate was allowed to cost for the drug, Eli Lilly introduced in additional than $1 million, equivalent to round $18.4 million in 2024, from insulin gross sales alone. In different phrases, though Banting didn’t make a direct revenue from insulin gross sales, the drug turned extremely worthwhile for Eli Lilly on account of the phrases of the sale.

Eli Lilly stays one of many three essential suppliers of insulin within the U.S., with the others being Sanofi and Novo Nordisk. Following worth caps introduced in 2023, Eli Lilly and Sanofi now cost a most out-of-pocket worth of $35 a month for probably the most extensively prescribed type of insulin. Novo Nordisk has additionally applied programs to scale back out-of-pocket prices for diabetes sufferers.

Earlier than the implementation of U.S. worth caps, nevertheless, American insulin costs far surpassed these in different nations. In a examine evaluating insulin costs within the U.S. with these in different nations, the RAND Corp. found that in October 2019 the typical U.S. worth per commonplace unit of the drug was $98.70, in contrast with $7.52 within the U.Ok., $9.08 in France and $12 in Canada. 

In abstract, it’s true that Banting and his insulin co-discoverers bought their patent for the drug to the College of Toronto for $1 in a sale that was finalized in 1923. Nevertheless, there isn’t a proof that Banting ever mentioned “Insulin doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the world,” regardless of the widespread look of the quote on social media and elsewhere. Moreover, though the 1923 sale of the insulin patent considerably sped up the supply of the drug worldwide, it didn’t immediately lead to universally reasonably priced insulin costs.

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