This is

is CBSi and the world. I'm John Bachelor.

100 years ago right now all around the earth.

Diabetes, the diagnosis of diabetes was considered a death sentence

and then a discovery was that insulin derived from farm animals, pigs and cows, can save and extend the lives of people

suffering with diabetes and that continued happy for many decades until it's very difficult to extract enough supply given the

demand and by the 1970s there weren't enough farm animals to provide enough

insulin for the size of the population with diabetes one.

And then comes a better idea.

I welcome Dr. Henry Miller, a physician.

Henry Miller is writing most recently about this miracle of

insulin once upon a time and also what we want what we need to know about how the FDA works. Henry, a very good evening to you.

Enter Henry Miller, the young man, and knowing the concern is a shortage of insulin, What was presented to the FDA that could solve this? Good evening to your doctor.

Good evening, John. Well, the fundamental breakthrough occurred in 1973 when two scientists discovered what was called recombinant DNA or gene splicing technology.

And they found that using enzymes

and the knowledge of bacterial physiology and genetics,

they could move genes more or less at will into microorganisms like E. coli.

And so the first real exploitation of this was putting a human insulin gene into E. coli and then growing it up at vast scale in fermenters similar to the way that we produce

wine or beer and then purifying that human insulin.

It was done in the early 80s by Eli Lilly and company whose flagship products were, had been insulin for almost a century.

And they did clinical trials on new patients who had never received insulin.

They did trials on patients who had been on pork or beef insulin and were switched to human insulin and the results were stunning.

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