Insulin’s sweet spot sours as diabetes deaths increase

Emily Dunn
Insulin protest
Nicole Smith-Holt holds a vial of her son’s ashes as part of a protest outside the offices of Sanofi in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, in November 2018. Photo: Getty Images

In 1922, an anxious father was waiting at Pyrmont Wharf in Sydney for a ship to come in.

At home, his five-year-old daughter Phyllis, weighing just 8.5kg, was slowly starving to death on a diet of butter and whey instituted after her diagnosis with type 1 diabetes six months earlier.