Gary Taubes on insulin as life-saving for type 1 diabetes: recommends

Gary Taubes says insulin’s 1921 discovery was a genuine breakthrough for type 1 diabetes, where the body produces no insulin — a disease he treats as categorically different from type 2.

His stated reasoning: he argues that insulin is unequivocally necessary and life-saving in type 1 diabetes, while holding that its use in type 2 diabetes reflects untested assumptions — that what works for a disease of insulin absence was applied, in his telling, to a disease of carbohydrate intolerance without adequate testing. He has made the distinction in the 2024 Defeat Diabetes interview and in Rethinking Diabetes.

This page reports Taubes’s position as he states it; it is not medical advice.

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.