conuly

Well, shoot, what *do* diabetic survivalists plan to do?

"Die," apparently. I have never heard of a diabetic survivalist, but I sure have heard a lot of diabetics respond to survivalists asking, "What are you going to do if civilization ends?!" with, "Die. I won't survive the end of modern medicine."

you wouldn't want to try it yourself unless you literally had no choice. (And I want to reiterate that one. If it isn't a life or death situation where the alternative is no insulin, please, let's leave medicine making to the professionals.)

Well, no. If you want to be able to manufacture insulin in an emergency, your best shot at success is practicing making insulin now. Consider that the woman in that link took a year of experimenting on rabbits to come up with that homemade batch of insulin.

Also, note that she pulled this off by having a copy of Beckman's Internal Medicine, something that will probably be vastly easier to source while ABEBooks is still functioning. Note that book doesn't seem to exist, so you might want to find some other set of instructions. Likewise, you'll want to make a shopping list of the necessary durable lab goods. Erlenmeyer flasks don't grow on trees.

ETA: Screw this "Beckman" person. Insulin and its application for diabetics was discovered by a guy named Banting and another guy named Best. I think you're looking for Banting, F.G., Best, C.H. (1923) The Discovery and Preparation of Insulin, U. of Toronto Medical Journal I (1923): 94-98.

ETA2: The bibliography of The Discovery of Insulin is a trove of cites to the original research.