[DoreenMichele]

That depends in part on exactly how this fresh meat source of insulin was used. If it was something consumed as part of the diet and not injected, then safety becomes much, much less problematic.

The story gave no details on how she handled it. Just that she did under circumstances where insulin was simply not available and she lived to tell the tale.

[code_duck]

There’s no mystery to that. Before modern bioengineered insulin the major type available was porcine insulin. It’s very similar to human insulin. It must be injected like any other insulin (as a simple protein it's broken down quickly in the digestive tract).

https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB00071#identification-header

Now and then it comes up and diabetes discussion groups, what would we do in the event of a widespread disaster without access to the pharmaceutical system? Pig pancreas. From what I recall it requires a very large amount of pancreas, perhaps several organs per dose, and a centrifuge.

[DoreenMichele]

Thanks!

[pankajdoharey]

The safety has to be guaranteed. For that the labs have to be certified where the Insulin is made or extracted, that costs money. It cannot be a ghetto lab operation like the manufacture of Illegal drugs.

[DoreenMichele]

You apparently are not understanding my comment. If the procedure the woman used is more akin to a secret family recipe -- here, eat this -- then, no, no certification would be required.

To whatever degree you can take care of your health with diet and lifestyle such that you don't require needles and other invasive equipment requiring sterilization, life is vastly simpler, better, cheaper and safer.

[paulcole]

> To whatever degree you can take care of your health with diet and lifestyle such that you don't require needles and other invasive equipment requiring sterilization, life is vastly simpler, better, cheaper and safer.

There is no degree to which this is true for people with Type 1 diabetes.

[bregma]

And likely ineffective.

If there was a secret, simple, safe, inexpensive way to treat Type I diabetes that is also effective there would have been no need for Banting and Best to have killed all those puppies. Unless, of course, you think there is a very effective conspiracy by Big Pharma to cover up that one secret that they hate. I guess they could also hire the Big Fake firm that did the moon landing campaign and the Building 7 demolition.

[DoreenMichele]

Most likely it's complicated, inconvenient and time consuming. The big thing modern medicine seems to have solved is that popping a pill or taking an injection has a lower barrier to entry in terms of skill and knowledge than other approaches.

If you care enough to learn other approaches, it's sometimes* possible to get superior results compared to the "plug and play" medical answer.

* (I actually want to say "often" but I don't really want to argue it. "Sometimes" seems less likely to get me dragged into pointless drama.)

[sgt101]

There is no "family recipe" to deal with Type 1 - if you don't get injectable insulin you die. It was a sure fire killer from when it was first identified (ancient egypt) to Banting and Best.

Insulin from animal sources is not as good as bioengineered insulin and it takes a lot of animals to make it.

[DoreenMichele]

Insulin from animal sources is not as good as bioengineered insulin

Respectfully, we may not actually know that. It's somewhat unusual for us to go back and re-test older methods after replacing them with a new-fangled thing and sometimes things change.

Actual natural quinine is proving to be more effective at treating malaria than synthetic derivatives. Various strains of malaria have grown resistant to the synthetics while natural quinine still works.

Modern drugs tend to strip things down to a single chemical and sometimes the more complex natural remedies have benefits that we are unable to capture with our superior ability to isolate components and refine them.

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” — Ben Franklin

In the past hundred years, there are things that have fundamentally changed about the world -- such as just the simple ability to somewhat reliably deliver clean water to ordinary people in developed countries -- and we may someday be able to revive older treatment methods and improve upon them to get something better than what those once were and also better than what we currently have.

These days, people with serious conditions pretty routinely do things at home that involve sterilizing instruments and other procedures that most people imagine can only be done in a hospital setting. A modern home can have assets, such as clean running water and various kitchen appliances, that would be the envy of many a scientist not that many decades back.

I hope we find better answers for type 1 diabetes soon.