“If we can make [insulin] in our janky lab on a $10,000 a year budget, there’s no way it should cost this much,” says Thornton Thompson. Photography: Alex Welsh

Biohackers With Diabetes Are Making Their Own Insulin

Diabetes is a punishingly expensive disease. In an Oakland warehouse, scientists are going DIY.

Dana G Smith
Elemental
Published in
11 min readMay 30, 2019

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DDavid Anderson pipettes yeast under a laboratory fume hood that’s surrounded by graffiti. From a beaker, he extracts a tiny amount of the microscopic fungus and transfers it to a test tube, which he then spins in a…

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Dana G Smith
Elemental

Health and science writer • PhD in 🧠 • Words in Scientific American, STAT, The Atlantic, The Guardian • Award-winning Covid-19 coverage for Elemental