The demand for insulin is enormous. It has been estimated that there are over 120 million diabetics in the world, many of them requiring treatment with insulin. In the United States, over 14 million patients with diabetes are estimated. Of these, 10 percent or 1.4 million are insulin dependent type 1 diabetics and a little over 12 million are type 2, one third, or 4 million of whom also require insulin for a combined total of nearly 6 million patients on insulin at a cost of more than 20 billion dollars per year.
Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, about 150,00 deaths per year. Insulin is essential to life. The insulin required to treat millions of diabetics until recently was extracted from the pancreas of pigs and beef after slaughter. German sources estimate that in order to provide 100,000 patients with porcine insulin it is necessary to slaughter 3.5 million pigs per year. Likewise in the United States over 20,000 tons of beef pancreas were required per year to supply the demand. In other words, it takes 14 cows' and 70 pigs' pancreas to supply one diabetic patient for one year. In 1984, 79 million animal pancreas were required to meet the U.S. needs. It was the last full year of animal derived pancreatic insulin. In recent years, the sources of animal pancreas have diminished considerably.
Modern technology makes it possible to produce biosynthetic recombinant human type insulin derived from bacteria, (i.e. E. coli) yeast and a semisynthetic human type insulin converted from pigs. Genetic engineering has made it possible to train microorganisms to produce insulin. An insulin identical to human insulin has been prepared from a microorganism known as E. coli, utilizing a method known as recombinant DNA technique. Here the bacteria have been genetically altered by the addition of the human gene for insulin production.
That is a lot of information about insulin. I found this interesting I hope you do also. If you are diabetic see the movie "Simply Raw" and help yourself. There is no profit in a health industry full of healthy people.
Chef D-Rawk
