Activism Change

Are you finally ready for this?

Question:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snip Even over here in the UK where it’s easy to GET beef or Pork, it’s very unusual for a newly dx’d diabetic to be told that such a thing as animal derived insulins actually exist. Even now, and it’s pretty obvious to me that there’s been a LOT more publicity surrounding this issue lately, so the message isn’t getting through the "Chain of command" (Drug companies through Doctors to users). to: beavis, i suspect that the world medical community do NOT want to see a return to animal insulin!!!  i have to believe that this includes the UK.

Methinks it’s world-wide thing Bill. and some valid reasons for this have slowly shown themselves in the occasional posting here by docs and a few (who post here) who are in medical biz type companies. namely: 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz. (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world  level of insulin usage.)

It’s possible that somewhere down the line there’d be a shortage if every newly dx’d diabetic was prescribed beef or pork, but there’s no need for that to happen. I would imagine there’s sufficient "future supply" for those who really DO do better than they would on Human, and for most, there’s no problem with Human, so if both types are kept available, everyone would be happy. The thing that worries me, is that even when a diabetic DOES have problems with Human insulin, (even over here) they’re simply moved to ANOTHER Human insulin and beef or pork are never mentioned. 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster.

IF we all used animal derived, then yes it could happen, but for that scenario to REALLY happen, first there’d have to be a total elimination of Human insulin and I can’t see that ever happening. This was a forced march, a deportation for millions of diabetics. It was fomented and promoted by Eli Lilly (and even Novo/Nordisk) in their lobbying of physicians to switch their patients over to human, because as they said, "human" was categorically better for "everyone".   mickey is correct.  the belief in the "goodness" of synthetic "human" insulin was VERY high in 1983.

It apparently still is. Beav

Response:

when i look at what is going on with this in mind, it makes sense.   that does mean i’m happy about it.

WHOOPS!   typo!  should be: that doesn’t mean i’m happy about it. bill t1 42y ex-pumper using beef-L 1x (doing simple 2x MDI)

Response:

to: guy williams, i’d appreciate it if you’d address who you’re talking to. while your attributions are correct, it appears that you intended this for larry lands. correct? then kindly park this poor thinking (on your part) under larry’s post. thank you, willbill – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz. (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world  level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster. But wouldn’t you agree that for some years now this part of their "reasons" is just a red herring?   From Guy Williams                         The issue of limited supply of insulin is very old.     I saw warning on the potential problems long before I had diabetes.    I think I saw warnings about a coming problem in the 1950’s              I don’t like Lilly for many reasons but I see they are taking bum rap on this issue.  They invested the money that prevented a shortage of insulin.            Deciding what you want and dreaming up issues to support your beliefs is not good logic.            If you are willing to pay the price I bet you can continue to get animal insulin.  I have no problem with anyone using any drug that they want.   I don’t feel that I need it.            

Response:

From Guy Williams                      Bill as usual you are right.  Since I monitor your posting I sometimes reply on your replies.  They are directed to the thread instead of the individual. Sometimes it is difficult to direct the reply exactly. I will try to avoid offending you. My statements about logic are valid.  Remember that" a dog is an animal,  a human is an animal, so a human is a dog."   This is the logic I see here quite often. s – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -to: guy williams, i’d appreciate it if you’d address who you’re talking to. while your attributions are correct, it appears that you intended this for larry lands. correct? then kindly park this poor thinking (on your part) under larry’s post. thank you, willbill 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz. (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world  level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster. But wouldn’t you agree that for some years now this part of their "reasons" is just a red herring?   From Guy Williams                         The issue of limited supply of insulin is very old.     I saw warning on the potential problems long before I had diabetes.    I think I saw warnings about a coming problem in the 1950’s              I don’t like Lilly for many reasons but I see they are taking bum rap on this issue.  They invested the money that prevented a shortage of insulin.            Deciding what you want and dreaming up issues to support your beliefs is not good logic.            If you are willing to pay the price I bet you can continue to get animal insulin.  I have no problem with anyone using any drug that they want.   I don’t feel that I need it.            

Response:

Michel, Since you wouldn’t answer my questions, how about one from my biochemist friend?  After reading your note she had the following to say: "In my research I purify cellular proteins from Saccharomyces Cerevisea.  I have never had these so called "mimic" proteins piggy bag in any purification.  Technology is by far more advanced now.  I would like to see a (current) reference or two to back up your opinions because I do not feel that they are accurate."

There are several problems here. One is that you gave your friend the wrong idea by telling her "mimic" proteins.  This is because you are involved in a subject you know little if anything about. A "mimic" protein would be one with similar if not identical *function*.  I was refering to physical attributes relating to the *structure* of the two proteins that prevented them from being separated.  This is an entirely different matter. Let me recount some history of impurities in insulin.  This will shed some light on all this. Year 1922 until about 1970.  Insulin was extracted from beef and pork pancreases and purified by recrystallization (I don’t care if you know what that means, and you shouldn’t think that just because you are some sort of computer whiz that you automatically understand.)  Recrystalization on the whole in organic chemistry when performed with care can produce some of the purest of organic molecules. So they told each other during this time:  THIS IS THE PURE STUFF! But in 1968 some new technology arrived.  This was called electrophoresis (another subject you would know nothing about). This technique demonstrated that there was a large amount of another protein whose presence till then was never suspected. It made up 2% of the material injected, and was found to be proinsulin.  Up until this point in time, whenever people failed to move their injection site from day to day by at least an inch, and not return to that site for months, great deposits could and did build up under the skin from repeated injection at the same place, due to the proinsulin accumulating.  These deposits took months to reabsorb. So in 1970, anion-exchange chromatography was added to the process of manufacturing clinically usable insulin.  They (Novo) thereupon named this new product "Mono-Component (MC) Insulin". Yes, guys, this is the best.  THIS IS THE PURE STUFF! But technology advanced.  In 1974, it was discovered that MC insulin still contained about 500 ppm of proinsulin, although it was a great improvement over 20,000 ppm.  Yet it was still causing some problems for certain people. So they added another chromatography step, now called size-exclusion chromatography (another topic that is not taught to computer "scientists").  When this is applied to its maximum effect, the proinsulin drops to 1 ppm or below.  However, in the interest of maximizing the return of insulin itself, less aggressive application of this technique was adopted that left from about 10 to 30 ppm of proinsulin, which was found to be adequately low. Then they rested confidently.  Yup, THIS IS THE PURE STUFF! More surprises came later.  In the late 1970’s, a new contaminant was found, which just like the others discovered before, was never dreamed of.  This was the non-insulin-like polypeptide PSP.  Fortunately, this time they seemed to have already beaten it to the punch.  In the original insulin sold up till 1970, there was around 110 ppm of this stuff.  But by the time they got to making MC insulin, it had dropped to less than 0.1 ppm.  But it had been a contaminant for many, many years without anyone knowing it. Now, the story moves to the middle 1980’s.  Human insulin is in full swing.  But this is a much more difficult product to purify, so they tried various approaches in their synthesis to find the most direct and least expensive route.  Contrary to what they do now, at the start of human insulin’s history they used two *separate* cultures of E. Coli to make each of the two different peptides (A chain and B chain) that insulin is built out of.   Then they used to hook them together chemically via the two disulphide bonds.  However, other products occur as side reactions in this synthesis, due to these bonds joining at the wrong places as well as the right places which make insulin. No matter, they thought.  "We’ll just purify out the wrong ones". Sure, or so they thought.   Yep, THIS IS THE PURE STUFF! …and they assured everone, including the FDA, physicians, and patients alike of this. But surprise, surprise.  It was discovered in 1985, three years later, that there was a whopping 1.8% impurities still left, caused by those same side reactions.  So, the approach of chemically joining A chain and B chain was abandoned, and the current approach of making the microorganism produce proinsulin was adopted, which then has the C-peptide sliced out of the middle and the A and B chain joined by an enzyme. People have to be real gulls to believe that their insulin, especially the human, is pure.  Right now, they are telling everyone that: THIS IS THE PURE STUFF!   That is only what they sincerely hope. Furthermore, human insulin (recombinant-DNA) requires some of the most agressive techniques to purify it.  Rather than the aqueous systems of anion-exchange and size exclusion chromatography, RP-HPLC is needed, and this requires the use of strong organic solvents.  A C-18 HPLC column is a challenge to manufacture without denaturing the insulin.  So too there is a real danger coming from the organic solvents.   These two factors contribute greatly to the need for synthetic insulin having to be bioassayed batch by batch.  This entails the much dreaded mouse convulsion tests, which consumes mountains of mice for each batch of insulin tested.  Otherwise, no one can be sure what you would be taking.  One bad HPLC column could turn insulin into something else entirely, and which has no glucose transporting effect at all.  (The process of making animal insulins is so fool-proof that the FDA two or three years ago eliminated the requirement for bioassay, and so ordinary chem lab analysis is all that is required, which essentially counts N atoms, and at the rate of 51 per insulin molecule, the amount of insulin in terms of international units can be quickly calculated.  Furthermore, this latter method yields far more accurate results that does the mouse convulsion test.  But it doesn’t indicate bioactivity, which has been judged unnecessary by the FDA.) …And as far as your biochemist friend goes, she is not in the same position as insulin-using diabetics.  She is doing research, not *taking* the protein by injection.  Whenever a problem comes up, further purification steps can be applied.  This is not a health problem for her. As far as her personal experience goes, it is merely "anecdotal". The ongoing history of insulin is far more demonstrative. Furthermore, she is NAIVE thinking that we have reached some sort of technological pinnacle, where we can remain confident that we can detect every single protein.  That borders on hubris. But, this may surprise you, biochemists are not considered to be very good chemists.  The American Chemical Society (which I am presently joining– finally got around to it) will not let them in, specifically the ones that followed the watered- down chemistry curriculum made for them.  This is basically their 2-quarter simplified Physical Chemistry course, that doesn’t meet the ACS requirement for the full year version, which the rest of the chemistry majors are required to take. Even biochemists themselves, the candid ones, will admit this. When I took biochem, my TA was a fourth-year grad student. He told us that all you needed was a passing grade in Organic (I was consistently 99.5th percentile in classes numbering around 450 students each), learn the names of the 20 amino acids, and you could easily pass for a biochemist.  I laughed.  But as I got further into that subject, I for one was really amazed at how easy it is.  And their labs aren’t like chem labs at all. At first glance, you might mistake one for a chem lab of the 18th century.  Their equipment is rather low tech by today’s standards.   It is quite remarkable what they are finding out, considering the tools and techniques they are using.  As their level of lab technology advances, they will certainly have a very bright future. And I don’t want to hear your usual "BS!" comeback, Marilyn. Thank you. Michel Martin – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – — Marilyn Type 1 for 33 years, Minimed pumping for the last 12 I was asked by WillBill a few days ago to comment on his original posting concerning the nature of the contaminants in human insulin, specifically their not having anything to do with mammalian life, having come from the lowly E. Coli bacteria (or Novo’s Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast). I have been waiting for this yelling session of the "Carnival of the Animals" to wind down, at least a bit.  (This is the wildest, most insane performance I have ever seen here.   And it is only done by about a dozen or so people.  But they have managed to all but clog this discussion group.  And let the record show, *I* wasn’t part of it.) In the first place, let me remind you that before I got to biomedical science, I worked and studied extensively for many years in both Organic and Biochemistry.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone if I should be quite competent to explain this issue.  But as far as know-it-alls, such as computer "scientists", coming along who know next to nothing about this branch of knowledge and wanting to argue with me, or even to discredit me, my pre-emptive reply is: "buzz off". That

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Response:

From Guy Williams                             From some of the data listed here,  we should stop all injections for any reason.        I was a person from the 1930’s and remember the diseases that killed a lot of relatives and friends.  I remember the ravages of polio,typhoid, and many diseases that most doctors have never seen.       It is easy to develop a distorted view in trying to win an argument.   But it would be criminal to cause someone to make the wrong decision.       If someone is out of step with the world that is OK But why evangelize the issue.        When all is said and done, common sense will prevail.  Do we have cases where any type of insulin has caused a disaster? .   If you demand a special low volume drug of any kind you should be prepared to pay for it. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.10003291236001.785- <snipped for space That makes the chances much greater for a separate E. Coli protein hiding behind the back of insulin itself and slipping through all the separation and purification steps, into your syringe (or whatever you use), ultimately into your bloodstream to either be destroyed by your immune system, OR ultimately perhaps do the same to YOU. What lends special credence to this is the fact that the length of the E. Coli’s DNA strand (its genome) indicates that it has genetic code enough for about 3000 different proteins. This figure is calculated using the law of averages, which is highly appropriate here, given the large quantity involved (~3000). However, despite this being by far the most studied and best understood bacterium in the world, researchers have not been able to isolate more than close to 1000 of those proteins, simply because they have not been able to separate any more of them from each other than that. So, if the biochemistry researchers can’t do it, how do you expect your beloved human insulin manufacturers to? They both are subject to exactly the same technological limitations. With a theoretical limit of up to ~2000 proteins, totally unidentified, what are your chances they have all been extracted? Most of these *are* in fact extracted by separation whether or not they are known. But who can guarantee you 100%? Do you trust your FDA? Do you trust the pharmaceutical industry? They can’t tell you, because they just don’t know. I have a few questions to help fully understand what you are saying. Do you have any information on what these rogue proteins would do to a person?  For example, you mention that it could kill you.  What proteins found in the small quantity in impure insulin would kill you? You are asking a very tall question.  But just to give you an example, *prions* (proteins) can kill you.  These are very simple proteins, but the right one can give you spongiform encephalopathy, similar to CJD.  This is one bad way to go.  It’s like Alzheimer’s, but much more painful and wearisome.  People will tell you that prions are only transmitted among animals, as well as humans.  Wrong again, they can be found anywhere, even among bacteria.  This is one way that multicellular animals are infected with prions.  Prions are the most controversial subject in Biology today, a pathogen that totally lacks DNA or RNA.  But they are for real…  Mankind’s best hope from them is to steer clear of extraneous proteins entering the bloodstream directly. So if you think that you can pump proteins foreign to your body into your body willy-nilly, you are wrong.  If you were right, transplanting organs would be child’s play.  On the contrary, few people live more than five years or so after a heart transplant (this may surprise many). Where else would a person find these proteins or is injected insulin the only place? Basically, a "person" never **injects** foreign proteins.  It’s only those who take parenterals, mainly diabetics, but also certain others, like children who take growth hormone by injection.  These also face the same problems. Michel Martin <snipped the rest — — Marilyn Type 1 for 33 years, pumping for the last 12 Before you buy.

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz. (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world  level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster. But wouldn’t you agree that for some years now this part of their "reasons" is just a red herring?  

From Guy Williams                          The issue of limited supply of insulin is very old.     I saw warning on the potential problems long before I had diabetes.    I think I saw warnings about a coming problem in the 1950’s               I don’t like Lilly for many reasons but I see they are taking bum rap on this issue.  They invested the money that prevented a shortage of insulin.             Deciding what you want and dreaming up issues to support your beliefs is not good logic.             If you are willing to pay the price I bet you can continue to get animal insulin.  I have no problem with anyone using any drug that they want.   I don’t feel that I need it.            

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz. (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world  level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster. But wouldn’t you agree that for some years now this part of their "reasons" is just a red herring?  

larry, i think your "red herring" comment (above) is off base. btw, i have seen groves use the word "Orwellian" and at times, the whole thing does strike me as "Orwellian" too bad that George Orwell didn’t title his famous book "2084"   <grin Lilly is moving out of the animal insulin biz.   plain and simple. and they appear to me to be doing it in a reasonably slow way. when i look at what is going on with this in mind, it makes sense.   that does mean i’m happy about it. Lilly, et al, could genetically engineer beef insulin just as they do the human variety. Those little E-coli don’t know what they’re making anyway, no?

i don’t think we’ll ever see synthetic beef insulin. and i can think of good business reasons why it won’t happen. i will grant that there have been several odd things with Lilly’s moves of this past 7 years.   the discontinuation of beef-UL in ‘93 is one of them. but then, why doesn’t CP do beef-UL??? puzzling when you stop to think about it. i’ll also grant that even the word "ethics" applies to some of what i see Lilly doing.  for certain, i think Lilly’s choice of wording on that Iletin-1 discontinuation notice was an ethical disaster for them. see the .gif graphic at the bottom of the html page at: http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/004_.htm a key part of all this is our oligopoly situation with the 2 insulin companies here in the USA.  i.e. Lilly and Novo. Since all the insulin here in this country is now manufactured, you can manufacture whatever variety you want, and I suspect the cost would also be the same, perhaps differing a small amount due to economies of scale.

the pricing of any commercial product depends not only on what goes into it. it also depends a lot on sales volume, which in turn depends on marketing (and other?) Lilly is moving out of the animal insulin biz.  hence, they deliberately choose to not spend a nickel on marketing of either beef or pork. there’s NOTHING ethically wrong about that. —– i did think you made an interesting point recently.  namely that Lilly could have stayed with beef and discontinued pork. especially since Novo still offers pork here in the USA. i think they’d have been criticized far less if they’d have taken that approach. and as you pointed out, they could have made more money by doing just that. —– the problem is that they clearly intend to get out of the animal insulin biz completely. bill t1 42y ex-pumper using beef-L 1x (doing simple 2x MDI) – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Larry L in Honolulu Type-I 39 years still taking beef

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – i suspect that the world medical community do NOT want to see a return to animal insulin!!!  i have to believe that this includes the UK. and some valid reasons for this have slowly shown themselves in the occasional posting here by docs and a few (who post here) who are in medical biz type companies. namely: 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz. (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world  level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster.

Bill, But wouldn’t you agree that for some years now this part of their "reasons" is just a red herring?  Lilly, et al, could genetically engineer beef insulin just as they do the human variety. Those little E-coli don’t know what they’re making anyway, no? Since all the insulin here in this country is now manufactured, you can manufacture whatever variety you want, and I suspect the cost would also be the same, perhaps differing a small amount due to economies of scale. Larry L in Honolulu Type-I 39 years still taking beef

Response:

Michel, Since you wouldn’t answer my questions, how about one from my biochemist friend?  After reading your note she had the following to say: "In my research I purify cellular proteins from Saccharomyces Cerevisea.  I have never had these so called "mimic" proteins piggy bag in any purification.  Technology is by far more advanced now.  I would like to see a (current) reference or two to back up your opinions because I do not feel that they are accurate." — Marilyn Type 1 for 33 years, Minimed pumping for the last 12

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I was asked by WillBill a few days ago to comment on his original posting concerning the nature of the contaminants in human insulin, specifically their not having anything to do with mammalian life, having come from the lowly E. Coli bacteria (or Novo’s Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast). I have been waiting for this yelling session of the "Carnival of the Animals" to wind down, at least a bit.  (This is the wildest, most insane performance I have ever seen here.   And it is only done by about a dozen or so people.  But they have managed to all but clog this discussion group.  And let the record show, *I* wasn’t part of it.) In the first place, let me remind you that before I got to biomedical science, I worked and studied extensively for many years in both Organic and Biochemistry.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone if I should be quite competent to explain this issue.  But as far as know-it-alls, such as computer "scientists", coming along who know next to nothing about this branch of knowledge and wanting to argue with me, or even to discredit me, my pre-emptive reply is: "buzz off". That said, insulin made by the recombinant-DNA route (i.e. the synthetic human insulins) start out as one of the dirtiest, filthiest, most contaminated substances in the world.  This is because once the E. Coli bacteria have made so much proinsulin (about 25-40% of their total body weight) and can make no more, the proinsulin is extracted from them by literally grinding them up.  Along with the target molecule comes at least 1000 other proteins from the inside of the E. Coli bacteria, perhaps as many as 3000, judging from the length of the E. Coli genome. Extracting all those other proteins is quite a job.  Most of them disappear in the initial crystallization steps.  The problem is that there is always the possibility that a protein, or several perhaps, exist that have all the same physical characteristics as insulin (there is quite a list of them), and hence slide through every single separation process.  This happened several times in the history of animal insulins, but each was remedied as technology advanced over the years.  In fact, it took new technology just to learn that the heretofore unknown impurity(s) were even present. But what makes animal insulins different?  The mere fact that the animal pancreatic beta cell has far less than 1/10 of the number of different proteins as E. Coli.  (The E. Coli is a standalone cell that has to survive all on its own, while the pancreatic beta cell has the luxury of being highly specialized, and thus needs a far smaller assortment of proteins, since it lives in a large, multi-cellular organism where each cell only has to perform specific limited functions.) That makes the chances much greater for a separate E. Coli protein hiding behind the back of insulin itself and slipping through all the separation and purification steps, into your syringe (or whatever you use), ultimately into your bloodstream to either be destroyed by your immune system, OR ultimately perhaps do the same to YOU. What lends special credence to this is the fact that the length of the E. Coli’s DNA strand (its genome) indicates that it has genetic code enough for about 3000 different proteins. This figure is calculated using the law of averages, which is highly appropriate here, given the large quantity involved (~3000). However, despite this being by far the most studied and best understood bacterium in the world, researchers have not been able to isolate more than close to 1000 of those proteins, simply because they have not been able to separate any more of them from each other than that. So, if the biochemistry researchers can’t do it, how do you expect your beloved human insulin manufacturers to?  They both are subject to exactly the same technological limitations. With a theoretical limit of up to ~2000 proteins, totally unidentified, what are your chances they have all been extracted?  Most of these *are* in fact extracted by separation whether or not they are known.  But who can guarantee you 100%? Do you trust your FDA?  Do you trust the pharmaceutical industry?  They can’t tell you, because they just don’t know. However, your insulin manufacturers have done their best.  Yet no one knows for sure what you are taking.  Granted, animal insulins are not 100% doubt free, but their odds of being pure are easily ten times those for synthetic human, maybe far more. But I wouldn’t worry about this.  The noisy ones around here cheered the exit of natural animal insulins, and no one now has much of a choice as to which source to take.  However, they may have been fools.  Just as those who prefer natural (or organic) foods (and now without genetic modification) have a right to choose, so too should insulin-using diabetics. It has been argued off-line that considering the all-out partisanship of this dozen odd people here for synthetic human insulin or ELSE, they may very well be plants set loose to shout down any opposition to the synthetics.  Normally, a person who uses one type of product is never this compelled to argue to death with another who uses a different type of product.  Oh, sure, people will talk, even have a lively discussion, but I have never seen *anything* the likes of this. It’s like a presidential campaign in a third-world country. (In the Phillipines, during such elections, they used to have an on-going death toll printed daily on the front page of the newspapers of the cummulative number of people who were shot to death over political partisanship for just that campaign.) One last point:  I always took umbrage at those who used to run around here at misc.health.diabetes claiming that animal insulins were "dirty", I guess from associating the muck and manure that the animals stand in when they’re alive.  (Great reasoning, right?)  They have it the wrong way. If a person is worried about impurities, they would be better off taking animal.  It’s just that much easier to clean up. But very few diabetics have that choice now, so they’ll just have to accept whatever is handed to them. I can hear the reply of the noisy ones already.  "BS!"  Just to dismiss this all out of hand only strengthens the possibility that they are indeed plants. Another type will scream that this is all scare tactics.  No, it’s simply a cool discussion of a potentially hot subject. Just because the timorous are easily frightened does not mean that I *set out* to frighten them.  People should remember that it takes guts to be a diabetic, more so for the Type 1’s. Adios, adieu (*not* au revoir), etc. Michel Martin

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – i suspect that the world medical community do NOT want to see a return to animal insulin!!!  i have to believe that this includes the UK. and some valid reasons for this have slowly shown themselves in the occasional posting here by docs and a few (who post here) who are in medical biz type companies. namely: 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz.  (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world   level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster.

What about the most obvious?  Most people feel that since human insulin is closer to natural insulin that it must be better. I’m not saying that this is or is not true but it is the reason that I have heard the most. Technological improvements and advancements in treatment are typically looked upon as improvements.  For the most part this has held true.  Can you imagine only having no antibiotics other than penicillin?  Or not having any treatment for heartburn or GERD than Tums or Rolaids?   I’m sure there are hundreds of examples of this. — Marilyn Type 1 for 33 years, Minimed pumping for the last 12

Response:

In fact, as I mentioned in another thread, I just took less than 5 minutes out of my life to web search a source of beef insulin and had it in my hands in less than 1 week. Randy importation to Canada is ludicrous…….

The site from which I purchased my vial was www.kidcure.com I am in no way related to the site, and I obtain no benefit from anyone shopping there other than to help anyone who might be in need of the product. Randy

Response:

<snip Even over here in the UK where it’s easy to GET beef or Pork, it’s very unusual for a newly dx’d diabetic to be told that such a thing as animal derived insulins actually exist. Even now, and it’s pretty obvious to me that there’s been a LOT more publicity surrounding this issue lately, so the message isn’t getting through the "Chain of command" (Drug companies through Doctors to users).

to: beavis, i suspect that the world medical community do NOT want to see a return to animal insulin!!!  i have to believe that this includes the UK. and some valid reasons for this have slowly shown themselves in the occasional posting here by docs and a few (who post here) who are in medical biz type companies. namely: 1. there is no way future volume demand could be met with available animal pancreas’ from the pig and cattle biz.  (btw, i’m not sure if this is now true for the current world   level of insulin usage.) 2. insulin via animals always has a risk of the supply being disrupted from an animal disease outbreak to the livestock. which could create an overnight insulin supply disaster. This was a forced march, a deportation for millions of diabetics. It was fomented and promoted by Eli Lilly (and even Novo/Nordisk) in their lobbying of physicians to switch their patients over to human, because as they said, "human" was categorically better for "everyone".  

mickey is correct.  the belief in the "goodness" of synthetic "human" insulin was VERY high in 1983. so the march went forward with great fanfare. and this despite the synthetic "human" having prices that were higher for a very long time.   but then, high tech usually commands a premium price. and now that animal insulin is MORE expensive, i hardly think we need be concerned about exceeding the available livestock. instead, we now have to worry about animal not being permitted in our "free" country. am i pissed with Lilly? no.   however, it will be interesting to see if this move haunts them in the future. am i pissed with FDA? yes. But we must not lose sight of the fact that nowhere else in medicine or in the *history* of medicine has there been a medication that was suitable for "everyone".  Lilly’s/Novo’s claim in this situtation is just a LIE.  It flies in the face of everything known in medicine. This is a good example of bottom-line economics taking precedence over medical necessity.  Sure, the corporate world can do this (legally), but is it ethical? Absolutely not, but I don’t see a way of forcing any of these companies to re-introduce beef/pork.

i agree with the use of the "ethics" word. fwiw, Lilly has been mighty careful about their wording for the Iletin-1 discontinuation. i just looked at it and find the wording VERY sly. sly to the point of making Mickey’s use of the "ethics" word valid. in it, Lilly has: "…  Human insulin alternatives to animal insulin may offer more therapy options for people with diabetes." taken literally, this appears to me to be a false statement by Lilly!  for the simple reason that Humalog is NOT "human" insulin. but it gets better with the next few sentences: "Lilly believes that human insulin is a good alternative to Iletin 1. and the 2 sentences that supposedly explain the differences between animal and human insulin?   my oh my!! *SLY* indeed!  and not one mention of Iletin-2 (pure pork), which Lilly happens to still make. but see the document.  it’s short.  groves has a .gif graphic of Lilly’s one page discontinuation notice easily viewable. it’s worth looking at: http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/004_.htm (at the bottom of the html page) <snip The answer to this is the Bellagio Report.  You can link to this at the page at http://www.beefinsulin.com.  I don’t remember the URL that connects directly, but you can find even that beefinsulin.com.

the Insulin Forum Switzerland has the Bellagio report at a different address. (no longer under Teuscher’s name) at: www.diabetes-ernaehrung.ch/fis/englvers/bellagio.htm A short answer to this is that it has been found that the neurons in the brain that are involved in sensing and notifying the brain’s "owner" that his/her blood sugar has gone south, do not function nearly as well on human insulin as they do on beef insulin.   Is this the case for everyone Mickey, or just some? Reason I ask is my early symptoms have changed (not lessened) since my move to beef. Nowadays they’re less "urgent" feelings and they’re more easily confused with a HIGH sugar level. If I feel "off" now, I HAVE to test, because it’s as likely that I’ve gone high as it is that I’ve dropped.

my own hypo awareness has improved with beef.   and most of my hypo symptoms changed.  pretty amazing. but HGA/HGU seems to be very YMMV! bill t1 42y ex-pumper using beef-L 1x (doing simple 2x MDI)

Response:

<big snip – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <big snip btw, i started asking questions of both dave groves *and* bruce beale (via e-mail) on "issues other than HGA/HGU being IMPORTANT" in very late ‘98. what surprised me was that my questions/comments seeded to fall on deaf ears. Their attention is focused nearly completely on their own problems. This is common among patients, especially the chronics. but then, both groves and beale have had unconscious daytime hypos (whereas i’ve not.  my 4 or 5 unconscious hypos were all during nighttime sleep hours.) so perhaps t1’s like groves, beale, tamblyn, et al. never let it go so far that they get into the "feel better" issue(s) that i got into. iow, they don’t continue with using "human" for years because their own HGU problems FORCE them to change away from using "human" whereas i continued with using "human" 100% for 6.5 years. i mean, i was on semi-synthetic "human" for 3 years before my own health even started to slowly go sour. Now here is where the subject of impurities is appropriately raised.

i remember that a year ago you bought a bottle of Novo’s semi-synthetic "human" Velosulin-BR (a Buffered Regular) what did you find out from that? my good fortune was in moving to synthetic Humalog (for 10 months) where things got worse much faster. this was what forced me to make the change back to beef/pork. —– 1) your post (below) suggests that *all* of the impurities in fully synthetic insulin are likely bad.   right? No.  It didn’t address that issue at all.

i understood that from the careful wording of your post. hence my use of "suggests" (above), which you underlined. Let me clarify.  Any protein extraneous to the human body that is injected into the body directly, bypassing the digestive track and liver (which can easily keep them from entering the body), is a potential health hazard.

<snip understood. of course, this also includes every insulin ever made. including even the newest synthetic insulin(s). ("human" or analog) right? i mean, the very term "impurity" itself, suggests that they must be bad.

<snip remainder one related question. am i correct in thinking that we also form anti-bodies to the impurities that are in insulin? if yes, to what extent? i mean, the overall level of impurities is now extremely low for all available commercial insulin here in the USA. assuming this is true (i.e. that we form anti-bodies to the impurities), do you have any sense of how well this is understood by the medical community and researchers? or do you get a sense that it is ignored due to the ever improving purity of insulin? ( which would tend to make it a non-issue? ) bill t1 42y ex-pumper using beef-L 1x (doing simple 2x MDI)

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.10003291236001.785- <snipped for space That makes the chances much greater for a separate E. Coli protein hiding behind the back of insulin itself and slipping through all the separation and purification steps, into your syringe (or whatever you use), ultimately into your bloodstream to either be destroyed by your immune system, OR ultimately perhaps do the same to YOU. What lends special credence to this is the fact that the length of the E. Coli’s DNA strand (its genome) indicates that it has genetic code enough for about 3000 different proteins. This figure is calculated using the law of averages, which is highly appropriate here, given the large quantity involved (~3000). However, despite this being by far the most studied and best understood bacterium in the world, researchers have not been able to isolate more than close to 1000 of those proteins, simply because they have not been able to separate any more of them from each other than that. So, if the biochemistry researchers can’t do it, how do you expect your beloved human insulin manufacturers to? They both are subject to exactly the same technological limitations. With a theoretical limit of up to ~2000 proteins, totally unidentified, what are your chances they have all been extracted? Most of these *are* in fact extracted by separation whether or not they are known. But who can guarantee you 100%? Do you trust your FDA? Do you trust the pharmaceutical industry? They can’t tell you, because they just don’t know. I have a few questions to help fully understand what you are saying. Do you have any information on what these rogue proteins would do to a person?  For example, you mention that it could kill you.  What proteins found in the small quantity in impure insulin would kill you?

You are asking a very tall question.  But just to give you an example, *prions* (proteins) can kill you.  These are very simple proteins, but the right one can give you spongiform encephalopathy, similar to CJD.  This is one bad way to go.  It’s like Alzheimer’s, but much more painful and wearisome.  People will tell you that prions are only transmitted among animals, as well as humans.  Wrong again, they can be found anywhere, even among bacteria.  This is one way that multicellular animals are infected with prions.  Prions are the most controversial subject in Biology today, a pathogen that totally lacks DNA or RNA.  But they are for real…  Mankind’s best hope from them is to steer clear of extraneous proteins entering the bloodstream directly. So if you think that you can pump proteins foreign to your body into your body willy-nilly, you are wrong.  If you were right, transplanting organs would be child’s play.  On the contrary, few people live more than five years or so after a heart transplant (this may surprise many). Where else would a person find these proteins or is injected insulin the only place?

Basically, a "person" never **injects** foreign proteins.  It’s only those who take parenterals, mainly diabetics, but also certain others, like children who take growth hormone by injection.  These also face the same problems. Michel Martin – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snipped the rest — — Marilyn Type 1 for 33 years, pumping for the last 12 Before you buy.

Response:

randy, this has been my own experience here in LA. it has been easy to get Iletin-1 up through end very end of ‘99.  (which is when i made my own last purchase.) and i too have wondered greatly about groves’ early cries of "no more beef"   (which 1st started more than a year ago and when into    the white heat zone maybe 9 months ago.) but this is it.  for real.

Yep, I do realize this. is the expiration date of the Iletin-1 (that you just got) May 1, 2000???

It is. to the best of my knowledge, the bottles with "May 1" are the last of it.

That is my understanding as well. i suspect (?) that there are probably federal and/or state laws which would prohibit sale of any medication when the expiration date is past. just a guess, of course.   any bets???  

My best guess is that anyone selling any beyond that date will probably be doing it without realizing what they are doing. Randy

Response:

In fact, as I mentioned in another thread, I just took less than 5 minutes out of my life to web search a source of beef insulin and had it in my hands in less than 1 week. So what did Lilly try to do to stop you from getting it? I heard they were actually preventing people from being able to buy any.

My neighbors tell me that there had been a helicopter with gunmen attempting to kill the postman, but they must’ve missed. Randy

Response:

In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.10003291236001.785-

<snipped for space – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – That makes the chances much greater for a separate E. Coli protein hiding behind the back of insulin itself and slipping through all the separation and purification steps, into your syringe (or whatever you use), ultimately into your bloodstream to either be destroyed by your immune system, OR ultimately perhaps do the same to YOU. What lends special credence to this is the fact that the length of the E. Coli’s DNA strand (its genome) indicates that it has genetic code enough for about 3000 different proteins. This figure is calculated using the law of averages, which is highly appropriate here, given the large quantity involved (~3000). However, despite this being by far the most studied and best understood bacterium in the world, researchers have not been able to isolate more than close to 1000 of those proteins, simply because they have not been able to separate any more of them from each other than that. So, if the biochemistry researchers can’t do it, how do you expect your beloved human insulin manufacturers to? They both are subject to exactly the same technological limitations. With a theoretical limit of up to ~2000 proteins, totally unidentified, what are your chances they have all been extracted? Most of these *are* in fact extracted by separation whether or not they are known. But who can guarantee you 100%? Do you trust your FDA? Do you trust the pharmaceutical industry? They can’t tell you, because they just don’t know.

I have a few questions to help fully understand what you are saying. Do you have any information on what these rogue proteins would do to a person?  For example, you mention that it could kill you.  What proteins found in the small quantity in impure insulin would kill you? Where else would a person find these proteins or is injected insulin the only place? <snipped the rest — — Marilyn Type 1 for 33 years, pumping for the last 12 Before you buy.

Response:

In fact, as I mentioned in another thread, I just took less than 5 minutes out of my life to web search a source of beef insulin and had it in my hands in less than 1 week. Randy

importation to Canada is ludicrous……. — k t1 13 yr

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – to: michel martin, thank you for the post.   your info skirts around my own key questions. —– my own REAL experience with beef and pork insulin this past 19 months is what keeps bringing me back to the impurities. namely: why do i feel better on beef/pork? why do i feel better on beef/pork? why do i feel better on beef/pork? A: i haven’t a clue.  

No one can give you a definitive answer on that.  However, in most medical practice, this type of phenomenon is always given great consideration.  OTOH, the forcing of people onto medications, such as from animal insulin to human, while deteriorating the patient’s health and well being, is normally considered to be quite abberant.  Yet precisely this was done over the years even before anyone had a hint that animal insulins were going to be discontinued for business reasons. This was a forced march, a deportation for millions of diabetics. It was fomented and promoted by Eli Lilly (and even Novo/Nordisk) in their lobbying of physicians to switch their patients over to human, because as they said, "human" was categorically better for "everyone".   But we must not lose sight of the fact that nowhere else in medicine or in the *history* of medicine has there been a medication that was suitable for "everyone".  Lilly’s/Novo’s claim in this situtation is just a LIE.  It flies in the face of everything known in medicine. This is a good example of bottom-line economics taking precedence over medical necessity.  Sure, the corporate world can do this (legally), but is it ethical? As an aside, only water (sufficiently pure), and glucose are appropriate for all of humanity.  Beyond that, you will always find someone, somewhere, who can’t tolerate just about everything else, even down to the rest of the simple sugars (lactose is a good example of this). insulin impurity(s) is the one thing in the insulins i’ve used that might be the common element (either the presence of "good/better impurities" in beef/pork or the lack of them in synthetic "human" and synthetic Humalog. i also get better Hypo Glycemic Awareness with beef. BUT this may be (note i said MAY BE) due to the beef insulin molecule itself (and/or the unique anti-bodies that my system creates when i use beef insulin) and not to the impurities.

The answer to this is the Bellagio Report.  You can link to this at the page at http://www.beefinsulin.com.  I don’t remember the URL that connects directly, but you can find even that beefinsulin.com. A short answer to this is that it has been found that the neurons in the brain that are involved in sensing and notifying the brain’s "owner" that his/her blood sugar has gone south, do not function nearly as well on human insulin as they do on beef insulin.   The reason that non-diabetics can function with no problem on their own native human insulin is that they still have their blood-sugar regulating system intact.  Specifically, this involves their being able to discontinue insulin delivery to the bloodstream in nearly an instant, and hence within a few minutes halt their slide in blood sugar.  OTOH, insulin-using diabetics cannot do this.  For them, insulin continues to enter the blood stream from either the injection site, or their infusion site (the pump users). Therefore, it is of extreme importance that insulin using diabetics be able to sense low blood sugar so that they can take corrective action, by eating or drinking something. If they don’t know that their blood sugar is dangerously low, they can eventually pass out.  When this happens when they are behind the wheel of a car driving 65 miles/hour, mayhem can result.   Again, as an aside, the Bellagio Report is a REVIEW of the medical research appropriate to their discussion.  However, they rearranged their presentation and stated their conclusions first in order to save the average reader the time needed to wade through all the evidence.  Yet this has caused some to lash out at it as a mere "position" paper, because they refuse to read all the review of the journal articles cited therein and which were printed in prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journals.  So, it is obvious that you can’t please everyone no matter how hard you try. —– more and more i think that this "feel better" issue is at least as important as the HGA/HGU issue. feeling better is fundamental to good health. feeling better is fundamental to good health. feeling better is fundamental to good health.

Agreed, as a general principle.  But on the subject of diabetes, this issue has been trashed, especially by the endocrinologists. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – but t1’s like dave groves and ken tamblyn appear (to me) to have made the battle cry focus on HGU. fwiw, i’ve seen a few t1’s comment on feeling better.   and this applies to BOTH pork as well as beef insulin. but so far, i’ve only seen one other t1 who has said something strong.  specifically that his health has been irreversibly destroyed by "human" insulin.   (a Brit guy who did a web page on it, which featured  a skull and crossbones <geez!) whether he is correct or not about the "human" insulin being the main culprit is anyone’s guess. —–

I haven’t seen his site.  But despite the world of issues that Dave Groves and I disagree on (they are mainly mistaken ideas on his part of a technical nature on which he refuses to be enlightened, bullhead that he is), I would say that his assessment of human insulin vs hypoglycemia unawareness is quite cogent.  You just can’t dismiss his experiences as being merely anecdotal.  As Dr. Alfred Teusher stated in the Bellagio Report, the number of cases of adverse effects concerning HGU under human insulin is simply far too great to write them all off as erroneous observations.  I agree. btw, i started asking questions of both dave groves *and* bruce beale (via e-mail) on "issues other than HGA/HGU being IMPORTANT" in very late ‘98. what surprised me was that my questions/comments seeded to fall on deaf ears.

Their attention is focused nearly completely on their own problems. This is common among patients, especially the chronics. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – but then, both groves and beale have had unconscious daytime hypos (whereas i’ve not.  my 4 or 5 unconscious hypos were all during nighttime sleep hours.) so perhaps t1’s like groves, beale, tamblyn, et al. never let it go so far that they get into the "feel better" issue(s) that i got into. iow, they don’t continue with using "human" for years because their own HGU problems FORCE them to change away from using "human" whereas i continued with using "human" 100% for 6.5 years. i mean, i was on semi-synthetic "human" for 3 years before my own health even started to slowly go sour.

Now here is where the subject of impurities is appropriately raised. my good fortune was in moving to synthetic Humalog (for 10 months) where things got worse much faster. this was what forced me to make the change back to beef/pork. —– 1) your post (below) suggests that *all* of the

impurities in fully synthetic insulin are likely bad.   right?

No.  It didn’t address that issue at all. Let me clarify.  Any protein extraneous to the human body that is injected into the body directly, bypassing the digestive track and liver (which can easily keep them from entering the body), is a potential health hazard. A good example of this is protamine, the protein that is in NPH insulins, as well as all the human insulins that have N in their designation.  Protamine is literally extracted from the sperm of the rainbow trout.  (Yes, I can hear people gasping at this one, but I assure you that I can supply all the references you need on this.)   This was done for protamine’s handy size in relation to insulin so that it functions as a "guest" molecule in assembling the lattice of the insulin microcrystals of this type. However, virtually everyone with a normally functioning immune system does develop anti-bodies to protamine, some (a handful of percent) even to the extent of generating a clinically observable systemic reaction to it. The use of protamine in insulin started in 1936.  It was a breakthrough in supplying time release insulin, at least for a basal, background level of plasma insulin. Before that, regular insulin taken round the clock was all there was.  However, by 1955 insulin microcrystals (in beef Lente and Ultralente) with only a small amount of zinc had become available (with no protamine), thus in efect rendering the protamine insulins obsolete.  But Protamine Zinc Insulin as well as NPH continued in use to this day, because of doctors who could never learn anything new as well as patients who didn’t want to change.  Actually, what Lilly said was true about patients being switched from NPH directly to Beef Lente on a "unit-for-unit basis".  I have watched this carried out on a clinical level with great success. The point I am making is this.  People stoutly believe that human is "better" because it is identical in amino acid sequence and hence structure to the insulin normally made by our species.  But when you consider the diabetics who take a human insulin that contains protamine (they are designated with the letter N), this no longer holds. And there are quite a few of these people.  I can say categorically from an immunological standpoint, virtually everyone would be better off taking beef insulin without protamine (the Lentes) than to be pumping some exotic protein from the sperm of the rainbow trout into their bodies.   Users of Humulin N or Novolin N who think that their insulin is "pure" are merely victims of drug companies’ hype.  A better choice would be the L’s–  they have no protamine, just zinc which amounts to less … read more »

Response:

In fact, as I mentioned in another thread, I just took less than 5 minutes out of my life to web search a source of beef insulin and had it in my hands in less than 1 week.

randy, this has been my own experience here in LA. it has been easy to get Iletin-1 up through end very end of ‘99.  (which is when i made my own last purchase.) and i too have wondered greatly about groves’ early cries of "no more beef"   (which 1st started more than a year ago and when into    the white heat zone maybe 9 months ago.) but this is it.  for real. is the expiration date of the Iletin-1 (that you just got) May 1, 2000??? to the best of my knowledge, the bottles with "May 1" are the last of it. i suspect (?) that there are probably federal and/or state laws which would prohibit sale of any medication when the expiration date is past. just a guess, of course.   any bets???   <smile bill t1 42y

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – to: michel martin, thank you for the post.   your info skirts around my own key questions. —– my own REAL experience with beef and pork insulin this past 19 months is what keeps bringing me back to the impurities. namely: why do i feel better on beef/pork? why do i feel better on beef/pork? why do i feel better on beef/pork? A: i haven’t a clue.   No one can give you a definitive answer on that.  However, in most medical practice, this type of phenomenon is always given great consideration.  OTOH, the forcing of people onto medications, such as from animal insulin to human, while deteriorating the patient’s health and well being, is normally considered to be quite abberant.  Yet precisely this was done over the years even before anyone had a hint that animal insulins were going to be discontinued for business reasons.

Mickey, Even over here in the UK where it’s easy to GET beef or Pork, it’s very unusual for a newly dx’d diabetic to be told that such a thing as animal derived insulins actually exist. Even now, and it’s pretty obvious to me that there’s been a LOT more publicity surrounding this issue lately, so the message isn’t getting through the "Chain of command" (Drug companies through Doctors to users). – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -This was a forced march, a deportation for millions of diabetics. It was fomented and promoted by Eli Lilly (and even Novo/Nordisk) in their lobbying of physicians to switch their patients over to human, because as they said, "human" was categorically better for "everyone".   But we must not lose sight of the fact that nowhere else in medicine or in the *history* of medicine has there been a medication that was suitable for "everyone".  Lilly’s/Novo’s claim in this situtation is just a LIE.  It flies in the face of everything known in medicine. This is a good example of bottom-line economics taking precedence over medical necessity.  Sure, the corporate world can do this (legally), but is it ethical?

Absolutely not, but I don’t see a way of forcing any of these companies to re-introduce beef/pork. As an aside, only water (sufficiently pure), and glucose are appropriate for all of humanity.

And water gives me indigestion! (True) – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –  Beyond that, you will always find someone, somewhere, who can’t tolerate just about everything else, even down to the rest of the simple sugars (lactose is a good example of this). insulin impurity(s) is the one thing in the insulins i’ve used that might be the common element (either the presence of "good/better impurities" in beef/pork or the lack of them in synthetic "human" and synthetic Humalog. i also get better Hypo Glycemic Awareness with beef. BUT this may be (note i said MAY BE) due to the beef insulin molecule itself (and/or the unique anti-bodies that my system creates when i use beef insulin) and not to the impurities. The answer to this is the Bellagio Report.  You can link to this at the page at http://www.beefinsulin.com.  I don’t remember the URL that connects directly, but you can find even that beefinsulin.com. A short answer to this is that it has been found that the neurons in the brain that are involved in sensing and notifying the brain’s "owner" that his/her blood sugar has gone south, do not function nearly as well on human insulin as they do on beef insulin.  

Is this the case for everyone Mickey, or just some? Reason I ask is my early symptoms have changed (not lessened) since my move to beef. Nowadays they’re less "urgent" feelings and they’re more easily confused with a HIGH sugar level. If I feel "off" now, I HAVE to test, because it’s as likely that I’ve gone high as it is that I’ve dropped. Beav – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – IMPRESSIVE TEXT OMITTED One last point:  I always took umbrage at those who used to run around here at misc.health.diabetes claiming that animal insulins were "dirty", I guess from associating the muck and manure that the animals stand in when they’re alive.  (Great reasoning, right?)  They have it the wrong way. If a person is worried about impurities, they would be better off taking animal.  It’s just that much easier to clean up. But very few diabetics have that choice now, so they’ll just have to accept whatever is handed to them. I can hear the reply of the noisy ones already.  "BS!"  Just to dismiss this all out of hand only strengthens the possibility that they are indeed plants. Another type will scream that this is all scare tactics.  No, it’s simply a cool discussion of a potentially hot subject. Just because the timorous are easily frightened does not mean that I *set out* to frighten them.  People should remember that it takes guts to be a diabetic, more so for the Type 1’s. Adios, adieu (*not* au revoir), etc. Michel Martin

Excuse me, but I don’t want to be a party to the imbroglio that has been happening here, because,  like most of the participants so involved, I am not qualified to make an intelligent appraisal of the facts.  You seem to have done that quite well, however. As best I can ascertain, the controversy is between two schools of thought polarized to the extremes over whether Humulin or animal insulin is better. I question that either side stands a prayer of successfully proselytizing the other.  It appears, however, little thought has been given by either side as to what course of action should be pursued if their persuasion is correct. Would it be possible for someone to provide me and others a list of positive steps that should be taken if, indeed, what they say is correct?  I have taken up a number of causes over the years, and would not be adverse taking up another one if someone would outline it for me. I suppose in summation, I would like for us to be able to put words into action.  As it stands now, the argument goes on and on and nothing ever gets done — words without action are hollow. Best wishes, Charles Evans

Response:

to: michel martin, thank you for the post.   your info skirts around my own key questions. —– my own REAL experience with beef and pork insulin this past 19 months is what keeps bringing me back to the impurities. namely: why do i feel better on beef/pork? why do i feel better on beef/pork? why do i feel better on beef/pork? A: i haven’t a clue.   insulin impurity(s) is the one thing in the insulins i’ve used that might be the common element (either the presence of "good/better impurities" in beef/pork or the lack of them in synthetic "human" and synthetic Humalog. i also get better Hypo Glycemic Awareness with beef. BUT this may be (note i said MAY BE) due to the beef insulin molecule itself (and/or the unique anti-bodies that my system creates when i use beef insulin) and not to the impurities. —– more and more i think that this "feel better" issue is at least as important as the HGA/HGU issue. feeling better is fundamental to good health. feeling better is fundamental to good health. feeling better is fundamental to good health. but t1’s like dave groves and ken tamblyn appear (to me) to have made the battle cry focus on HGU. fwiw, i’ve seen a few t1’s comment on feeling better.   and this applies to BOTH pork as well as beef insulin. but so far, i’ve only seen one other t1 who has said something strong.  specifically that his health has been irreversibly destroyed by "human" insulin.   (a Brit guy who did a web page on it, which featured  a skull and crossbones <geez!) whether he is correct or not about the "human" insulin being the main culprit is anyone’s guess. —– btw, i started asking questions of both dave groves *and* bruce beale (via e-mail) on "issues other than HGA/HGU being IMPORTANT" in very late ‘98. what surprised me was that my questions/comments seeded to fall on deaf ears. but then, both groves and beale have had unconscious daytime hypos (whereas i’ve not.  my 4 or 5 unconscious hypos were all during nighttime sleep hours.) so perhaps t1’s like groves, beale, tamblyn, et al. never let it go so far that they get into the "feel better" issue(s) that i got into. iow, they don’t continue with using "human" for years because their own HGU problems FORCE them to change away from using "human" whereas i continued with using "human" 100% for 6.5 years. i mean, i was on semi-synthetic "human" for 3 years before my own health even started to slowly go sour. my good fortune was in moving to synthetic Humalog (for 10 months) where things got worse much faster. this was what forced me to make the change back to beef/pork. —– 1) your post (below) suggests that *all* of the impurities in fully synthetic insulin are likely bad.   right? i mean, the very term "impurity" itself, suggests that they must be bad. 2) you specifically referenced animal insulin coming from the beta cells of the animals. but the reality is that the entire pancreas is ground up. which suggests to me that the impurities would contain traces of stuff from both the pancreas and the Islets of Langerhans (alpha/beta/delta/C cells). right? 3) to take just one of these: the alpha cells. glucagon comes from the alpha cells. do you know if traces of glucagon are present in the impurities of beef and pork insulin? 4) and do you know how similar the glucagon of pigs and cattle are to human glucagon? i mean, the insulin itself is different.  what about the other stuff like beef or pork glucagon? bill t1 42y ex-pumper using beef-L 1x (doing simple 2x MDI) <snip – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –            insulin made by the recombinant-DNA route (i.e. the synthetic human insulins) start out as one of the dirtiest, filthiest, most contaminated substances in the world.  This is because once the E. Coli bacteria have made so much proinsulin (about 25-40% of their total body weight) and can make no more, the proinsulin is extracted from them by literally grinding them up.  Along with the target molecule comes at least 1000 other proteins from the inside of the E. Coli bacteria, perhaps   as many as 3000, judging from the length of the E. Coli genome. Extracting all those other proteins is quite a job.  Most of them disappear in the initial crystallization steps.  The problem is that there is always the possibility that a protein, or several perhaps, exist that have all the same physical characteristics as insulin (there is quite a list of them), and hence slide through every single separation process.  This happened several times in the history of animal insulins, but each was remedied as technology advanced over the years.  In fact, it took new technology just to learn that the heretofore unknown impurity(s) were even present. But what makes animal insulins different?  The mere fact that the animal pancreatic beta cell has far less than 1/10 of the number of different proteins as E. Coli.  (The E. Coli is a standalone cell that has to survive all on its own, while the pancreatic beta cell has the luxury of being highly specialized, and thus needs a far smaller assortment of proteins, since it lives in a large, multi-cellular organism where each cell only has to perform specific limited functions.) That makes the chances much greater for a separate E. Coli protein hiding behind the back of insulin itself and slipping through all the separation and purification steps, into your syringe (or whatever you use), ultimately into your bloodstream to either be destroyed by your immune system, OR ultimately perhaps do the same to YOU. What lends special credence to this is the fact that the length of the E. Coli’s DNA strand (its genome) indicates that it has genetic code enough for about 3000 different proteins. This figure is calculated using the law of averages, which is highly appropriate here, given the large quantity involved (~3000). However, despite this being by far the most studied and best understood bacterium in the world, researchers have not been able to isolate more than close to 1000 of those proteins, simply because they have not been able to separate any more of them from each other than that.   So, if the biochemistry researchers can’t do it, how do you expect your beloved human insulin manufacturers to?  They both are subject to exactly the same technological limitations. With a theoretical limit of up to ~2000 proteins, totally unidentified, what are your chances they have all been extracted?  Most of these *are* in fact extracted by separation whether or not they are known.  But who can guarantee you 100%? Do you trust your FDA?  Do you trust the pharmaceutical industry?  They can’t tell you, because they just don’t know. However, your insulin manufacturers have done their best.  Yet no one knows for sure what you are taking.  Granted, animal insulins are not 100% doubt free, but their odds of being pure are easily ten times those for synthetic human, maybe far more.

<snip remainder

Response:

I was asked by WillBill a few days ago to comment on his original posting concerning the nature of the contaminants in human insulin, specifically their not having anything to do with mammalian life, having come from the lowly E. Coli bacteria (or Novo’s Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast). I have been waiting for this yelling session of the "Carnival of the Animals" to wind down, at least a bit.  (This is the wildest, most insane performance I have ever seen here.   And it is only done by about a dozen or so people.  But they have managed to all but clog this discussion group.  And let the record show, *I* wasn’t part of it.) In the first place, let me remind you that before I got to biomedical science, I worked and studied extensively for many years in both Organic and Biochemistry.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone if I should be quite competent to explain this issue.  But as far as know-it-alls, such as computer "scientists", coming along who know next to nothing about this branch of knowledge and wanting to argue with me, or even to discredit me, my pre-emptive reply is: "buzz off". That said, insulin made by the recombinant-DNA route (i.e. the synthetic human insulins) start out as one of the dirtiest, filthiest, most contaminated substances in the world.  This is because once the E. Coli bacteria have made so much proinsulin (about 25-40% of their total body weight) and can make no more, the proinsulin is extracted from them by literally grinding them up.  Along with the target molecule comes at least 1000 other proteins from the inside of the E. Coli bacteria, perhaps as many as 3000, judging from the length of the E. Coli genome. Extracting all those other proteins is quite a job.  Most of them disappear in the initial crystallization steps.  The problem is that there is always the possibility that a protein, or several perhaps, exist that have all the same physical characteristics as insulin (there is quite a list of them), and hence slide through every single separation process.  This happened several times in the history of animal insulins, but each was remedied as technology advanced over the years.  In fact, it took new technology just to learn that the heretofore unknown impurity(s) were even present. But what makes animal insulins different?  The mere fact that the animal pancreatic beta cell has far less than 1/10 of the number of different proteins as E. Coli.  (The E. Coli is a standalone cell that has to survive all on its own, while the pancreatic beta cell has the luxury of being highly specialized, and thus needs a far smaller assortment of proteins, since it lives in a large, multi-cellular organism where each cell only has to perform specific limited functions.) That makes the chances much greater for a separate E. Coli protein hiding behind the back of insulin itself and slipping through all the separation and purification steps, into your syringe (or whatever you use), ultimately into your bloodstream to either be destroyed by your immune system, OR ultimately perhaps do the same to YOU. What lends special credence to this is the fact that the length of the E. Coli’s DNA strand (its genome) indicates that it has genetic code enough for about 3000 different proteins. This figure is calculated using the law of averages, which is highly appropriate here, given the large quantity involved (~3000). However, despite this being by far the most studied and best understood bacterium in the world, researchers have not been able to isolate more than close to 1000 of those proteins, simply because they have not been able to separate any more of them from each other than that.   So, if the biochemistry researchers can’t do it, how do you expect your beloved human insulin manufacturers to?  They both are subject to exactly the same technological limitations. With a theoretical limit of up to ~2000 proteins, totally unidentified, what are your chances they have all been extracted?  Most of these *are* in fact extracted by separation whether or not they are known.  But who can guarantee you 100%? Do you trust your FDA?  Do you trust the pharmaceutical industry?  They can’t tell you, because they just don’t know. However, your insulin manufacturers have done their best.  Yet no one knows for sure what you are taking.  Granted, animal insulins are not 100% doubt free, but their odds of being pure are easily ten times those for synthetic human, maybe far more. But I wouldn’t worry about this.  The noisy ones around here cheered the exit of natural animal insulins, and no one now has much of a choice as to which source to take.  However, they may have been fools.  Just as those who prefer natural (or organic) foods (and now without genetic modification) have a right to choose, so too should insulin-using diabetics. It has been argued off-line that considering the all-out partisanship of this dozen odd people here for synthetic human insulin or ELSE, they may very well be plants set loose to shout down any opposition to the synthetics.  Normally, a person who uses one type of product is never this compelled to argue to death with another who uses a different type of product.  Oh, sure, people will talk, even have a lively discussion, but I have never seen *anything* the likes of this. It’s like a presidential campaign in a third-world country. (In the Phillipines, during such elections, they used to have an on-going death toll printed daily on the front page of the newspapers of the cummulative number of people who were shot to death over political partisanship for just that campaign.) One last point:  I always took umbrage at those who used to run around here at misc.health.diabetes claiming that animal insulins were "dirty", I guess from associating the muck and manure that the animals stand in when they’re alive.  (Great reasoning, right?)  They have it the wrong way. If a person is worried about impurities, they would be better off taking animal.  It’s just that much easier to clean up. But very few diabetics have that choice now, so they’ll just have to accept whatever is handed to them. I can hear the reply of the noisy ones already.  "BS!"  Just to dismiss this all out of hand only strengthens the possibility that they are indeed plants. Another type will scream that this is all scare tactics.  No, it’s simply a cool discussion of a potentially hot subject. Just because the timorous are easily frightened does not mean that I *set out* to frighten them.  People should remember that it takes guts to be a diabetic, more so for the Type 1’s. Adios, adieu (*not* au revoir), etc. Michel Martin

Response:

Filed under: Lobbying

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