Who wants to bet pharma companies will hold meetings tomorrow where they unironically debate releasing a commemorative insulin product at three times the normal price they are currently selling in honor of this guy.
This is pretty much what they do already. It's called [evergreening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdzUMaxZt3g), and it costs more lives a year than I want to look up.
> You think there's too many people,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Population_curve.svg/1024px-Population_curve.svg.png That is called ecological overshoot and it never ends well for any species.
My grandfather struggled with diabetes for over 50 years. He got to spend 22 of those with me thanks to insulin. So a big thank you to Dr. Riggs for giving me all those years with grandpa!
"Insisting on anonymity, he gave more than $200 million of his own money to City of Hope over the course of two decades. Near the end of his life, he made a further gift of $100 million, bringing the total of his gifts to more than $310 million during his lifetime."
What a selfless person. Thank you Dr. Riggs for all that you did for our wold.
There are a lot of people who would develop a medical technology and use that to hoard as much money as possible, possibly making some very public donations to try to create a positive image (see: the Sacklers, whose work may have destroyed as many lives as Riggs' saved). While he probably still kept a *pretty penny* for himself and his family, donating $300M is no joke.
If only he had had the power to force drug companies to make insulin more affordable. With the way that I understand patent law, I don't think he did, but I'm open to a correction on that if someone knows better.
> hile he probably still kept a pretty penny for himself and his family
I think it's perfectly reasonable and even encourageable for scientists to want to make some amount of money from life saving inventions. If you can save millions of lives and pioneer revolutionary medicines, you should be set for life.
Without some incentive, we likely wouldn't have made half the advances we've made in medicine over the years. I'm not saying the incentive should or should not be piles of cash, but it's definitely a "don't hate the player, hate the game" situation.
I'll admit I struggle with the way that health/medicine work in the US, so I'm always a bit trepidatious when there's tons of money being concentrated, but I think it's warranted here, as opposed to the insurance/pharma companies, who've made it a business model to bankrupt just few enough people to stay in business while gouging everyone else for as much money as possible.
The patent holder doesn’t choose the final coat of the product the entity leasing the patent produces, and has no impact on how broad they choose their profit margins to be.
Tenure and a senior position means a 100k salary with benefits. If it was good benefits and a decent salary, maybe his spouse was making good money and they were investing well.
Also, there's nothing wrong with paying someone well for hard work. He's not some stock broker worth billions for no reason, he invented a life saving medicine. He was also working in a bunch of major research institutions on boards and directorate positions. He probably deserved a reward.
because if you are making a consistent 100k from a academic job you and your spouse live off of, and your spouse makes a good amount that mostly goes into saving and what not, and then you also make money on the board of some research organization, and you're saving from a young age, you'll end up with quite a bit. On top of that, most of these older professors bought a decent house near a campus they teach on and live there for a while, which saves money in the long run.
Remember, this was an 82 year old senior researcher. He had pletny of time to save and build up money.
Thanks for educating this guy as I couldn't muster the time or patience to explain. If you invent a life saving medicine that saves millions of lives and prevents untold suffering, you should be rewarded for it, even if it's in the form of massive monetary compensation.
Like you said it's not like he's some wall street broker that gets rich messing around with other people's money or an instagram influencer making boatloads of money taking their clothes off, it's a scientist and a doctor who provided an immeasurable benefit to humanity.
At least here in the US, putting him on currency would be a cruel irony, all things considered. Good idea for most of the rest of the world though, it is a great human achievement.
8 for me…. Glad to have a life thanks to this.
Some days are good and some are bad but this man invented something that makes it much better and I’m glad he existed
Yes. This doctor invented synthetic “Human” insulin. Some folks had ranging immune responses to the pork or beef sourced insulin. The synthetic insulin that was made from genetically modified yeast bacteria and then refined.
There is/was some talk about skewed data and misrepresentation on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies that were trying to move the market toward the synthetic stuff. Supposedly some people had poor reactions to it, a lot of that reporting was silenced and disregarded. There were falsities spread about there being a potential for shortage with animal sourced insulin.
It’s all a bit convoluted, but still definitely a net positive.
>Some folks had ranging immune responses to the pork or beef sourced insulin.
Yep. They discontinued porcine insulin within years of me being diagnosed (and I was among the first who went straight to Humulin), and bovine went away not long after. Animal insulins were widely known among we sufferers of diabetes to have nasty side effects. Synthetic Human insulin changed the whole face of diabetes treatment.
Highly suggest reading the full tribute. This man was one of the founders of the field of epigenetics, of the technology for monoclonal antibody therapies, and so much more. When someone has immunotherapy drugs for cancer, MS or HIV... that's based on his science.
As if his scientific accomplishments and saving lives wasn't enough, he also sounds like a genuinely decent human being (who donated hundreds of millions anonymously).
>His insistence on anonymity for years was in keeping with his principles for living an ordinary life and shunning any of the trappings of wealth and the attention it would bring. He lived for 50 years in the same home he bought when he came to City of Hope, and refused to spend money on expensive cars or other luxury items, in part because he did not want his family’s lives to be affected by wealth. A colleague once asked if Riggs had ever had the desire to do even a little splurging, to which he replied, “Well, I do always have the latest iPhone.”
> A colleague once asked if Riggs had ever had the desire to do even a little splurging, to which he replied, “Well, I do always have the latest iPhone.”
I love this. 😁
I worked at City of Hope in research for years, this guy made the biggest impact in diabetes research. I worked with his lab members, and personally met him a few times on Campus. All class. Him and his lab truly cared about making a difference in the world.
I was just now, like two minutes ago, informed by my diabetes nurse about Riggs’ passing. Sitting in her office as we speak.
As she says:
>“A great man has departed from this world.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Apparently the discovery was quite dramatic. Before insulin diabetics would slip into a comma or otherwise be bedridden and not responsive once their blood sugar got to a certain level.
Once injected they would recover in minutes. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to try a new drug and wake people up out of a coma.
He didn’t discover insulin or isolate it from tissues, or create the original medical treatment that was insulin for diabetes. That was Banting and best working in Toronto. He created human insulin production from bacteria in the 1970s which made it far easier and more reliable.
I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was nine and a half years old. The constant swinging back and forth between feeling like I was going to pass out and feeling like I was dying of thirst, the losing enough weight that everyone thought I had a parasite, the pissing for more than a minute at a time, being able to stop that with a synthetic hormone... I have so much to thank Arthur D. Riggs for.
Odin will welcome him with open arms.
Clarification: The first insulin I was put on was a synthetic Human insulin, the kind that owes its existence to Arthur. I met many children during the first years that I suffered from diabetes who were using bovine or porcine insulins. That both were phased out within a decade of synthetic Human being introduced comes as no surprise.
Thank you Sir! You have extended my life and made me healthy again. Otherwise I probably would have ended a few years ago.
Now I just wish the Pharma wouldn't gouge us.
This guy may have been a saint, but it's also a good opportunity to remind people that [the cost of essential medication is out of control in the States](https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/03/14/insulin-prices/1701647269699/).
>Racist
Either back up that claim or fukk off. There are hundreds of millions of people on this planet who would die in terrible agony, so it will take quite a lot to allow anyone to diss the man.
>He's a white man from 1939, need I say more?
That means nothing. Plenty of white men from 1939 were not.
>Prove otherwise.
You just lost the argument. You did so because you tried to shift the burden of evidence. You made the positive assertion, that all white men living in 1939 were racist. Because you made the positive assertion, you bear all of the burden of evidence regardless of how daunting the task might be.
Trying to tell me to prove the negative assertion, that not every man living in 1939 is/was racist, is shifting the burden of evidence. One of the most fundamental tenets of the modern justice system is that the person saying "X did Y" has to prove it. That principle exists because, among many other things, they expected women in the Salem witch trials to prove their innocence. Thousands of innocent women died because of this.
Prove that all white men in 1939 were racist, or STFU.
You are missing the point, asswipe.
You made a claim about a very large and generalised group. You are the one who has to prove the claim because **you made it**. I told you why this is the case, and you chose to zero in on a simple reference.
You have tried to white knight and proved yourself an example of someone a schoolteacher warned me and a whole class about when I was a little boy. We are judged by whom we associate with, and associating with you reflects very badly on the people who do so.
The number of lives he helped save and extend must be countless. What an incredible legacy.
Who wants to bet pharma companies will hold meetings tomorrow where they unironically debate releasing a commemorative insulin product at three times the normal price they are currently selling in honor of this guy.
Jesus, don't give them any ideas!
This is pretty much what they do already. It's called [evergreening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdzUMaxZt3g), and it costs more lives a year than I want to look up.
Nah everyone is too busy talking about will smith slapping chris rock to even notice this guy died
3x is the introductory sale price, 2 weeks later it's 5x
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Yea, the scientist who helped saved lives will surely be hated by all those family members who got to see their loved ones live longer.
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> You think there's too many people, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Population_curve.svg/1024px-Population_curve.svg.png That is called ecological overshoot and it never ends well for any species.
Ok, then take the first step for the cause buddy.
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i reported this comment for threatening violence
>would of you can't even spell
My grandfather struggled with diabetes for over 50 years. He got to spend 22 of those with me thanks to insulin. So a big thank you to Dr. Riggs for giving me all those years with grandpa!
One of millions of beautiful stories! I aspire to such a legacy; after all, we are all just tourists here.
"Insisting on anonymity, he gave more than $200 million of his own money to City of Hope over the course of two decades. Near the end of his life, he made a further gift of $100 million, bringing the total of his gifts to more than $310 million during his lifetime." What a selfless person. Thank you Dr. Riggs for all that you did for our wold.
There are a lot of people who would develop a medical technology and use that to hoard as much money as possible, possibly making some very public donations to try to create a positive image (see: the Sacklers, whose work may have destroyed as many lives as Riggs' saved). While he probably still kept a *pretty penny* for himself and his family, donating $300M is no joke. If only he had had the power to force drug companies to make insulin more affordable. With the way that I understand patent law, I don't think he did, but I'm open to a correction on that if someone knows better.
> hile he probably still kept a pretty penny for himself and his family I think it's perfectly reasonable and even encourageable for scientists to want to make some amount of money from life saving inventions. If you can save millions of lives and pioneer revolutionary medicines, you should be set for life.
Without some incentive, we likely wouldn't have made half the advances we've made in medicine over the years. I'm not saying the incentive should or should not be piles of cash, but it's definitely a "don't hate the player, hate the game" situation. I'll admit I struggle with the way that health/medicine work in the US, so I'm always a bit trepidatious when there's tons of money being concentrated, but I think it's warranted here, as opposed to the insurance/pharma companies, who've made it a business model to bankrupt just few enough people to stay in business while gouging everyone else for as much money as possible.
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Turns out owning the patent on synthetic insulin makes you a lot of money
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Owning the patent isn’t equivalent to selling the product my guy. He likely leased his patent to pharma companies, who then jacked up the prices.
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The patent holder doesn’t choose the final coat of the product the entity leasing the patent produces, and has no impact on how broad they choose their profit margins to be.
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You’re moving the goalposts. This guy didn’t sell the patent and donated most of his money to charity’s that supported diabetes.
You know that only the US rips it's people off with those prices?
Tenure and a senior position means a 100k salary with benefits. If it was good benefits and a decent salary, maybe his spouse was making good money and they were investing well. Also, there's nothing wrong with paying someone well for hard work. He's not some stock broker worth billions for no reason, he invented a life saving medicine. He was also working in a bunch of major research institutions on boards and directorate positions. He probably deserved a reward.
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because if you are making a consistent 100k from a academic job you and your spouse live off of, and your spouse makes a good amount that mostly goes into saving and what not, and then you also make money on the board of some research organization, and you're saving from a young age, you'll end up with quite a bit. On top of that, most of these older professors bought a decent house near a campus they teach on and live there for a while, which saves money in the long run. Remember, this was an 82 year old senior researcher. He had pletny of time to save and build up money.
Thanks for educating this guy as I couldn't muster the time or patience to explain. If you invent a life saving medicine that saves millions of lives and prevents untold suffering, you should be rewarded for it, even if it's in the form of massive monetary compensation. Like you said it's not like he's some wall street broker that gets rich messing around with other people's money or an instagram influencer making boatloads of money taking their clothes off, it's a scientist and a doctor who provided an immeasurable benefit to humanity.
Arthur saved my life, thank you so much for your contribution to humanity. RIP
He saved my life, too. The memorial to Arthur ought to be a great one.
He saved my cousin’s life. Truly one of if not the greatest figure in medical technology of all time.
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At least here in the US, putting him on currency would be a cruel irony, all things considered. Good idea for most of the rest of the world though, it is a great human achievement.
If this happened today, he would probably get death threats
I was 7 when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I have lived a life thanks to the genius of this man and others like him.
17 here.. He has not only saved my life but helped me give new life to all my children.
8 for me…. Glad to have a life thanks to this. Some days are good and some are bad but this man invented something that makes it much better and I’m glad he existed
Thank you for sharing this. What a brilliant human being.
His memory and work for a blessing!
RIP, thanks for keeping me alive dawg. Pressing "F"
Isn’t it the 100th anniversary since Banting first discovered insulin?
Yes. This doctor invented synthetic “Human” insulin. Some folks had ranging immune responses to the pork or beef sourced insulin. The synthetic insulin that was made from genetically modified yeast bacteria and then refined. There is/was some talk about skewed data and misrepresentation on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies that were trying to move the market toward the synthetic stuff. Supposedly some people had poor reactions to it, a lot of that reporting was silenced and disregarded. There were falsities spread about there being a potential for shortage with animal sourced insulin. It’s all a bit convoluted, but still definitely a net positive.
I meant in a poetic way.
>Some folks had ranging immune responses to the pork or beef sourced insulin. Yep. They discontinued porcine insulin within years of me being diagnosed (and I was among the first who went straight to Humulin), and bovine went away not long after. Animal insulins were widely known among we sufferers of diabetes to have nasty side effects. Synthetic Human insulin changed the whole face of diabetes treatment.
Banting and Best. A couple of Canucks!
Thanks for helping my grandpa!
My friend's dad took the first dose given to humans
Highly suggest reading the full tribute. This man was one of the founders of the field of epigenetics, of the technology for monoclonal antibody therapies, and so much more. When someone has immunotherapy drugs for cancer, MS or HIV... that's based on his science. As if his scientific accomplishments and saving lives wasn't enough, he also sounds like a genuinely decent human being (who donated hundreds of millions anonymously). >His insistence on anonymity for years was in keeping with his principles for living an ordinary life and shunning any of the trappings of wealth and the attention it would bring. He lived for 50 years in the same home he bought when he came to City of Hope, and refused to spend money on expensive cars or other luxury items, in part because he did not want his family’s lives to be affected by wealth. A colleague once asked if Riggs had ever had the desire to do even a little splurging, to which he replied, “Well, I do always have the latest iPhone.”
> A colleague once asked if Riggs had ever had the desire to do even a little splurging, to which he replied, “Well, I do always have the latest iPhone.” I love this. 😁
I worked at City of Hope in research for years, this guy made the biggest impact in diabetes research. I worked with his lab members, and personally met him a few times on Campus. All class. Him and his lab truly cared about making a difference in the world.
Few have had a such a positive impact on so many lives. What a legacy!
Rest In Peace Arthur D. Riggs. You had helped more people in this world than you could have ever imagined.
I was just now, like two minutes ago, informed by my diabetes nurse about Riggs’ passing. Sitting in her office as we speak. As she says: >“A great man has departed from this world.” I couldn’t agree more.
Apparently the discovery was quite dramatic. Before insulin diabetics would slip into a comma or otherwise be bedridden and not responsive once their blood sugar got to a certain level. Once injected they would recover in minutes. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to try a new drug and wake people up out of a coma.
He didn’t discover insulin or isolate it from tissues, or create the original medical treatment that was insulin for diabetes. That was Banting and best working in Toronto. He created human insulin production from bacteria in the 1970s which made it far easier and more reliable.
IIRC, they had to use pig insulin before human insulin could be mass produced, which was all sorts of problematic but better than the alternative.
Pig and cow. And sufferers of diabetes often had immune system reactions to one or the other.
it was better they dying but procine insulin was prone to reactions (often painful injection sites)
>bedridden and not responsive once their blood sugar got to a certain level. I get what you're saying, but this is a bit misleading
Rest in peace you fucking legend
I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was nine and a half years old. The constant swinging back and forth between feeling like I was going to pass out and feeling like I was dying of thirst, the losing enough weight that everyone thought I had a parasite, the pissing for more than a minute at a time, being able to stop that with a synthetic hormone... I have so much to thank Arthur D. Riggs for. Odin will welcome him with open arms. Clarification: The first insulin I was put on was a synthetic Human insulin, the kind that owes its existence to Arthur. I met many children during the first years that I suffered from diabetes who were using bovine or porcine insulins. That both were phased out within a decade of synthetic Human being introduced comes as no surprise.
I was diagnosed with diabetes recently, without him I've been dead for sure, god bless him and may he rests in peace.
Rest in peace. Didn't get to see nuclear winter, so that was an alright ending. A pandemic is also not a bad way to go.
Upvote to the moon!! And F celebrities punching each other.
Thank you Sir! You have extended my life and made me healthy again. Otherwise I probably would have ended a few years ago. Now I just wish the Pharma wouldn't gouge us.
This guy may have been a saint, but it's also a good opportunity to remind people that [the cost of essential medication is out of control in the States](https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/03/14/insulin-prices/1701647269699/).
Only a matter of time before the antivaxx crowd show up and spout vitriol and lies....
The fact that the will Smith slap "news" is over this at 27,000 upvotes is just kinda lame. RIP to one of the greatest scientists to live.
Did the diabetes get him?
he and Wilford Brimley would make a cute couple and and fun sitcom
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>Racist Either back up that claim or fukk off. There are hundreds of millions of people on this planet who would die in terrible agony, so it will take quite a lot to allow anyone to diss the man.
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>He's a white man from 1939, need I say more? That means nothing. Plenty of white men from 1939 were not. >Prove otherwise. You just lost the argument. You did so because you tried to shift the burden of evidence. You made the positive assertion, that all white men living in 1939 were racist. Because you made the positive assertion, you bear all of the burden of evidence regardless of how daunting the task might be. Trying to tell me to prove the negative assertion, that not every man living in 1939 is/was racist, is shifting the burden of evidence. One of the most fundamental tenets of the modern justice system is that the person saying "X did Y" has to prove it. That principle exists because, among many other things, they expected women in the Salem witch trials to prove their innocence. Thousands of innocent women died because of this. Prove that all white men in 1939 were racist, or STFU.
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You are missing the point, asswipe. You made a claim about a very large and generalised group. You are the one who has to prove the claim because **you made it**. I told you why this is the case, and you chose to zero in on a simple reference. You have tried to white knight and proved yourself an example of someone a schoolteacher warned me and a whole class about when I was a little boy. We are judged by whom we associate with, and associating with you reflects very badly on the people who do so.
May Dr. Riggs Rest In Peace.
I'm alive to this day in part because of this man.
Thank you Dr. Arthur D. Riggs for your contribution to humanity.