Print

1.Lifeline to health yanked away
2.Eli Lilly has some diabetics scrambling

RELEVANT QUOTE

"Since its introduction 20 years ago this summer, genetically engineered insulin has been linked not only to an increasing number of unexplained deaths but to a range of side-effects that some patients say have destroyed their lives. These range from unexpected hypos to massive weight gain, violent mood swings, memory loss, joint pains, mental confusion and crippling exhaustion."

THE GM INJECTION
Daily Mail, August 29, 2002
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5225
------

1.Lifeline to health kicked away
Comment by Dr Brent Hoadley

The following article, which appeared in the Indianapolis Star on 08/27/05, indicates the "callousness" of Eli Lilly . . . but does not address the fact of how the insulin-using population has been manipulated to ensure that Lilly has a monopolistic stranglehold on the market.

Since the mid-1980s, Lilly has promoted its cheaply-produced [and genetically engineered] rDNA insulin, warning doctors and patients of the impending withdrawal of the old standard animal insulins. AND, they have systematically withdrawn one animal insulin after another from the market. New diabetics, new doctors and new pharmacists do not even KNOW about animal insulin, and its safety and efficacy (compared to the new stuff.) They have been "brainwashed" to believe that animal insulins are dirty.

Without a true basis for comparison, and with a manufacturer who essentially controls the marketplace, they can now--after 20 years--say that their rDNA insulin is "the most popular" and/or "the most used." With powerful Bush-family backing, they have stayed below the radar of consumer advocates as well as the Justice Department's anti-trust overseers. The number of diabetics who have been harmed by the rDNA insulin is unknowable, but the entire chronicle is appalling.

That diabetics have over the course of 20 years been forced to "choose" between a couple of inferior products to manage their disease should have the media's watchful eyes fully opened. Alas, no one seems to recognize that when a marketing/business plan serves to enslave one needful group of patients . . . it will work for others, and eventually, it will work for the masses. You can see that a small news article, presented in an informative but non-confrontational manner, does little to arouse a sleepy public to the dangers being permitted by our governmental watchdog agencies. Pleas to the FDA are answered by a "canned" response that they cannot force a manufacturer to produce (or to continue to produce) a product, regardless of its medical necessity.

The government may not be able to "force" such an action . . but by requiring a drug to be as safe and efficacious as an already-approved drug . . . by requiring batch testing of insulin production . . . by correctly placing rDNA insulin under bio-tech regulations instead of the more prosaic "medicine" category, and by CAREFULLY scrutinizing the studies supporting approval request, they could certainly serve their purpose of protecting the public. Until someone arouses a sleeping public, Lilly and its ilk continue to profit and grow fat while diabetics continue to become statistics in some unread governmental report.

(Isn't is newsworthy that another Lilly product””Zyprexa ”” actually causes those users to become diabetic. Talk about market manipulation! ”” Lilly is actually ADDING to its customer base. Somehow, this seems to be the ULTIMATE in market manipulation!)

Brent Hoadley, Ph.D.
Bring Back Beef Insulin--Diabetics DESERVE a Choice
------

2.Eli Lilly has some diabetics scrambling
By Jeff Swiatek
Indy Star, 27 August 2005
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050827/BUSINESS/508270362

Brent Hoadley counts himself among a small number of diabetics upset that Eli Lilly and Co. has yanked away one of their lifelines to good health, the last animal-sourced insulin sold in the United States.

A retired horticulture professor in Lamont, Fla., Hoadley found out last month that Lilly will stop selling Iletin pork insulin when existing supplies run out later this year.

Hoadley criticized the Indianapolis drug maker this week for not trying to find a way to keep producing small batches of pork insulin for its 2,000 U.S. and 400 Canadian customers. The two countries are the last markets where Lilly sells the once widely used Iletin brand.

"They could have had production once a year of animal insulin and kept everyone happy. (But) they don't want (to sell) the lower-priced animal (insulin)," Hoadley said. "They want to move to patented products," he said, which carry higher prices and have far more users.

Lilly officials said they know of no firm trying to offer a replacement animal-derived insulin in the U.S. market. But in Canada, Lilly has pledged to help Indian drug maker Wockhardt Ltd. offer a replacement pork insulin.

No technology

Lilly's help is limited to "guidance and advice" about winning government product marketing approval, company spokeswoman Marni Lemons said, and doesn't include sharing any manufacturing technology.

Hoadley said that once he uses his small stockpile of Iletin he probably will import pork insulin from Britain, using a special federal drug import permit for which he has yet to apply. A more drastic option, he said, is to move to Australia, where pork insulin still is sold.

The dwindling numbers of Iletin users prompted Lilly's decision to end sales, Lemons said. Actual human users are even fewer than 2,400, she said, since a significant amount is bought for diabetic dogs or cats.

The disappearance of animal insulins made from ground-up pancreas glands from slaughtered livestock completes the takeover of the North American market by biosynthetic insulins that were introduced in the mid-1980s. The new insulins are made using gene-cloning technology. Lilly's two major brands are Humulin and Humalog.

Dr. John A. Hunt, a semi-retired diabetes doctor in Vancouver, said he regrets that the biosynthetics have pushed animal insulins off the market because he has found some patients can control their blood-sugar levels better using insulin from pigs or cattle.

Hunt said he treats about 25 patients with animal insulin and they now will have to find another source for it.

"I've got a lot of really unhappy people around here," he said.

Wockhardt in 2003 bought CP Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of pork and beef insulin in Great Britain, where animal-derived insulin remains more widely used than in the United States and Canada.

Call Star reporter Jeff Swiatek at (317) 444-6483.