Insulin and Eli Lilly: What is this youtube comment talking about?

[Genecks]

I tried looking into this, but I could not figure out what this comment was talking about. In some ways it seems self-evident, but I don't know what the discussion is about. It seemed to have received a lot of approval ratings from other youtube members.

 

"deanjean71 is right. Cloned insulin is a defective product. In Eli Lilly's cloned insulin's phase 2 clinical trials in England in 1982, there was a 30% adverse reaction rate. But Eli Lilly covered that percentage up and had their own doctors report a 2 to 3% adverse reaction rate. Again, Eli Lilly wanted to raise the price of insulin and couldn't do so unless they "improved" it. But cloned insulin IS NOT an improvement, just another defective product from Eli Lilly."

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[Greippi]

I don't know anything about this "defective insulin", in fact I have never heard anything about it. Here's what I know on the topic:

 

In the 1920s, it was possible to purify insulin from cows and pigs, so diabetics could expect to survive for longer and live a relatively normal life. In the 1980s recombinant commercial protein became available (i.e. putting the human insulin gene in to a vector and producing human insulin).

The problems that I am aware of from that was that an increase in old-age complications (from the diabetes itself) was seen (blindness, stroke, kidney failure, heart disease) as the patients were living longer. There was also a trend for hypoglycemic coma due to an accidental overdose of insulin (the patients experienced a loss of ability to sense hypoglycaemia).

Before human insulin became available deaths from hyperglycaemic coma were common - now the opposite was happening!

[Genecks]

Well, at best, the other commenter said this:

 

I just read that George H.W.Bush & Dan Quayle with ties to Eli Lilly encouraged the fast track of the rDNA synthetic insulin through the FDA & then the Bush administration tried to limit the public's ability to sue drug companies. The profits from rDNA synthetic insulin affords the powerful to purchase new cars for their children, while we parents of diabetic children are left to purchase coffins or worse for our children, because of the defective insulin that we are forced to buy. Importing--

 

I don't quite understand how it would have been defective, though.

[MedGen]

I'm pretty sure the current recombinant insulin produced by Eli Lilly (under the name Humulin) is a fully humanised protein that has an increased pharmacological effectiveness (most likely through an increased affinity for the insulin receptors - don't quote me on that though). The reason they use a recombinant fully humanised insulin is to prevent the 5% of the population suffering from the immunogenic effect caused by the 2 amino acid difference between the human and bovine insulins.

 

It sounds like a bit of an anti-Big Pharma conspiracy to me.