https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/lillys-weekly-insulin-succeeds-late-stage-studies-2024-05-16/#:~:text=Lilly%20and%20Novo%20Nordisk%20(NOVOb,review%20in%20the%20United%20States.
Pharma is close to approval of weekly insulin products–which means the market for multiple-shots-per-day insulin will mostly “go away”. Which will mean production of that insulin will also mostly “go away”.
It was not just insulin that was price negotiated.
The next product will be under pressure to keep the price fairer to the public. A future negotiation will happen during the patent’s lifetime.
I have the perfect NeverInsulin drug. Apply two or three times a day.
The Captain
I have the perfect antidote to such ignorance.
*Education
*Education
*Education
What Captain and VeeEnn said, but with the caveat that very few humans are as data driven as they, or as are most of the denizens of this board.
Effective education is embedded into social webs.
I have been able to transform the lives of three of my lifelong friends who long struggled with obesity, not by getting them to educate themselves, but by getting them to shift their circles of friends from normal obese folk to weird healthy folk, and the diet and life patterns shifted right along with the friendships.
My 40 year old godson quit his video game oriented set of fat beer drinking chip chomping geeks and joined a group of early morning hiking birdwatchers, starting with a group of ancients who walked slowly in a nearby urban park. The best birds required much faster more agile hiking. The 45 year volunteered as the math mentor at an institution that fosters children abandoned by drug addicted parents, using athletic prowness as its lure and academic excellence as its self esteem mechanism. The kids adored him for his skill in teaching, and rescued him by getting him to cheer them at competitions and sharing their “training table”. The 60 year old was the most radical, as she quit her “weightwatchers” group and took up pursuit of hot young salsa dancers, and then progressed from that to becoming a competitive senior trapeeze artist and now teacher.
Forget diets. Focus on lively living and playing and eating with healthy people.
d fb
Notwithstanding, the fact that so many folk have eaten and sat their way to metabolic syndrome and subsequent insulin dependence…a totally acquired and preventable condition…doesn’t alter the reality that significant numbers of individuals have Type I diabetes and other insulin dependent conditions and had no part to play in their disease.
Insulin was first identified and developed for these very people…who, regardless of healthy lifestyle etc, died prematurely of particularly horrible deaths. Probably still would without insulin.
I’d hardly describe understanding this fundamental fact of biology as “data driven”…more along the lines of knowing what you’re talking about if you’re going to talk.
Re: type I diabetes: YES.
Lost two of my best childhood friends to type I, even with insulin treatment, horribly. One of them was a girl one year older than me who taught me how to dance when I was 7. She died when she was 19.
d fb
It is most unfortunate that two different diseases have the same name, Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Type one is an error by nature. Type two is the result of industrial progress.
Type 1 is lack of insulin - sick pancreas
Type 2 is excess of insulin - sick food supply
Now they are calling other ailments Type 3 diabetes - more confusion!
“Type 3 diabetes” is a term some researchers use to describe the theory that insulin resistance and insulin-like growth factor dysfunction in the brain may cause Alzheimer’s disease. More research is needed to understand the link between diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease
Fire was the first food revolution. Cooking made life easier. Side effect, the gut got shorter and the teeth smaller.
Agriculture was the second food revolution. More people could be fed. Side effect, people got smaller.
Industrial Food is the third food revolution. Many, many more people could be fed. Side effect, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and all sorts of related maladies.
The Piper wants to be paid. Grimm!
The Captain
It’s an interesting sign of the times that initial responses to a discussion about insulin concern T2D, though. Granted, a bit of backtracking on correction, but it goes to show that Bad Habits have so taken over the narrative when it comes to health that it’s become an assumption that it applies to across the board…and in a good many other diseases that are commonly associated.
I see this as a trend that’s likely to get worse in the future as more folk develop metabolic dysfunction at increasingly younger ages and consume more of the healthcare dollar for longer. Additionally, as older physicians …the ones who graduated into a landscape where there were fewer overfat/obese individuals and who consequently have experience of patients who’ve been lifetime Good Custodians of their bodies who still get sick retire. Bad Habits seem to be so prevalent and seen as a causative factor in “diabetes”, ASCVD…and any of a myriad other obesity associated conditions…that now Good Custodianship is likely to provide a smokescreen for proper assessment.
The HAES/Fat Activist crowd moan that body size is oftentimes a barrier when it comes to getting good quality care. Same with the appearance of decent self care.
My husband says I’m a bit judgemental. I can’t imagine why.
A huge part of the obesity etc issue is the over emphasis on individual responsibilty.
I am in my old residence in a small town on the island of Mallorca, and here, as in much of France, how to cook and eat is part of the school curriculum, with emphasis on the specific recipes of this particular town using local ingredients,
The kids and young adults here look so much healthier!!! What a NOT coincidence. Diet is NOT only a matter of individual responsibility; it is also a key part of civil life.
d fb
India has also fallen into bad habits!
But it has nothing to do with the food supply! Just bad, bad, bad habits!!! 
The Captain
Guys some far gone Type 2 diabetics take insulin.
Mostly Type 1 diabetics take insulin.
Used to be the case. I think at least 50% of pharma profits for insulin come from T2D these days.
I have to admit I was never that far gone. My highest sugar count was 128. The doctors never worried much. Now my sugar is under 90.
Yeah, well…I’ve found out the hard way that it’s not necessary a vote for rude good health when doctors “don’t worry”.
More likely their profits come from the weight loss type products. People can not stop taking them because they then gain the weight back.
The new insulin replacement drugs are once weekly instead of multiple times daily. The FDA extended the approval time frame for icodec (brand name: Awiqli) to the third quarter of 2024.
I don’t doubt it but notice…I responded to @Leap1 regarding insulin and concerning profits now and, I’d guesstimate, for easily the past 10 years or so.
FWIW, for the time I was in practice in England …from when I completed my residency in the late 1970s until coming to the US in 1986…I can’t recall seeing a single patient using insulin who wasn’t Type 1. Just to make sure, I double checked with my former roomies on a visita few years ago…one who was also a general dentist in practice and the other a pediatric dentist and head of a large hospital service at a teaching hospital. They confirmed that it wasn’t until the last 20 years or so that insulin dependent T2D became more commonplace.
20 years or so is pretty close but it takes some years for T2D to manifest. There are stages like ‘prediabetes’ and fatty liver which you get from excess fructose (high-fructose corn syrup). The sad part is that a better diet is all you need to stay healthy but it is only recently that this is becoming common knowledge but sadly (again) mixed in with lots of BS sales pitches. It is very much a case of regulator capture by industry - food and drugs.
Prediabetes means you have a higher than normal blood sugar level. It’s not high enough to be considered type 2 diabetes yet. But without lifestyle changes, adults and children with prediabetes are at high risk to develop type 2 diabetes.
The Captain
One of the weekly insulin product makers is Novo Nordisk, who also pioneered GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. Novo Nordisk was founded as an insulin manufacturing company and insulin has remained the core of its business for 100 or so years. The core business is so large Novo Nordisk has become the largest company in Europe by market cap.
Interestingly, while Novo Nordisk is a for profit company, the majority shares are owned by a non-profit foundation. The foundation has a mandate to research and manufacture health care products, but does not have a mandate to grow the company. That’s explains the contradiction why Novo Nordisk produced Ozempic, even though it cannibalizes their core insulin business.
American Diabetes association says that as of 2021, roughly 38.4 million Americans have diabetes, roughly 2 million type 1.