Leroy, Insulin shares the characteristics of any product which is essential or deemed essential--which would also apply to illegal drugs. However, there are asually substitutes that are available. A Heroin junkie can get by with Hycodan cough syrup when his supply gets cut off. Even more so, most people have food choices...as is well know by the Hedonics manipulators at the BLS who come up with their entertaining CPI numbers each month. Steak too expensive? Try hamburger. If beef requires 9 times as much cereal grain to produce the equivalent food calories, a switch to vegetarianism is a definite option. Dried beans and rice, the staples of the Macrobiotic communes of the 1970s, are going to make a big comeback and trounce the high animal protein diets of recent times. Only instead of practicing this spartan diet to acquire virtue and enlightenment, we will do it out of economic necessity. We may even end up choosing the high carb diet to put on weight as our clothes get too baggy!