Insulin In The Uk

Alison54321

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Absolutely..and the EU has just done a deal with Japan and the US because they know what they want.

Stop it, stop it, stop it. This is just silly. Remember what happened to TTIP? and how well discussions are now going with Trump.

As for Canada. The Dexeu plan was a Canada +++ deal, before mad May came up with her unworkable Chequers deal, so if you all like it so much, you should be pleased.
 
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ickihun

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I wrote about this on Saturday:

http://www.diabettech.com/brexit/fa...n-to-insulin-and-brexit-should-we-be-worried/

Basically, all the Human insulin we use in the UK is manufactured in France, Spain and Denmark. The UK produces Porcine and Bovine insulin.

Opening up agreements with non-UK suppliers comes with two issues:
  1. We can't make trade agreements outside the EU till we're outside the EU
  2. Logistics for importing from China or the US are vastly different in terms of transporting insulin, than from EU countries, in terms of cost of refrigerated shipping.
Of all the prescriptions for Insulin in England in April 2018, 0.3% were for Bovine and Porcine, and 99.7% were for Human and Human Analogue.

In other words, while we do produce insulin in the UK, it's not what the vast majority of insulin users use, so to all intents and purposes, looking at what Rawlins said, we might as well not produce a drop of insulin in the UK!
Maybe that can change?
 

Alison54321

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This is probably the most absurd thing imaginable. The embarrassment to any government, and this one in particular, after the incredibly bad handling of brexit, means that they would probably send Olly Robbins himself, to collect the insulin, if there was the remotest chance of this happening.
 
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hh1

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Sorry, my last post wasn't clear - I was referring to your links to Daily Mash @Scott-C. Still laughing...
 
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dbr10

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Absolutely..and the EU has just done a deal with Japan and the US because they know what they want.
We need to proceed with caution. Japan deal took 5 years and Trump is the Liar-in-Chief. There wasn't actually a deal. There were talks.
 

dbr10

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The most intelligent comment I've heard so far on this Brexit mess was from a financial journalist on Question Time.
You need to question the background and agenda of these people; and, in particular, who funds them. This is particularly important with dodgy characters from the Tax Avoiders Alliance or the so called institute of Economic Affairs. Do you know who it was?
 

tim2000s

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The particular problem with insulin is that it has to remain cold at all times and importers need to consider possible problems if it is held up at customs.
I was looking at this, as the basic unit of measurement on customs delays is the amount of time a refrigerated truck can keep its contents cold.

Digging though various articles on line, it looks as though it requires 0.5-1.0 litre of fuel per hour to maintain a refrigerated state for a truck, ignoring any need to drive the thing. Typical 44 tonne truck fuel tanks appear to hold around 500l of fuel.

Assuming the truck refilled before arriving at port and then refilled just after leaving it on the other side, let's take 30 litres out of that calculation. That leaves 470 litres of fuel.

If the truck is inefficient it will use 1.0l per hour, so we have 470 hours. That's still nearly 20 days stuck at a port waiting for customs to do their job. I just can't see that level of delay really occurring.

Obviously this is conjecture and guesswork, but can you really see delays of two weeks or more at the ports?
 

tim2000s

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Maybe that can change?
Maybe it can, however the technology to make rDNA insulin currently isn't in the UK. It would require building, commissioning and then bringing production up to speed in nine months, and of course the investment dollars to do so (insulin plants cost around $1,000,000,000) which no current company is going to do to purely service the UK.
 
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dbr10

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I was looking at this, as the basic unit of measurement on customs delays is the amount of time a refrigerated truck can keep its contents cold.

Digging though various articles on line, it looks as though it requires 0.5-1.0 litre of fuel per hour to maintain a refrigerated state for a truck, ignoring any need to drive the thing. Typical 44 tonne truck fuel tanks appear to hold around 500l of fuel.

Assuming the truck refilled before arriving at port and then refilled just after leaving it on the other side, let's take 30 litres out of that calculation. That leaves 470 litres of fuel.

If the truck is inefficient it will use 1.0l per hour, so we have 470 hours. That's still nearly 20 days stuck at a port waiting for customs to do their job. I just can't see that level of delay really occurring.

Obviously this is conjecture and guesswork, but can you really see delays of two weeks or more at the ports?
Where do the two weeks come from
 

Draco16

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Assuming the truck refilled before arriving at port and then refilled just after leaving it on the other side, let's take 30 litres out of that calculation. That leaves 470 litres of fuel.

As long as the fuel stations by the ports have the diesel capacity / availability to brim the tanks of 1,000s of HGVs all waiting... supply chain, etc...

I understand the plan the government is working on is that drivers of perishable / essential loads will be given special extra dark blue British passports so they can be flagged through immediately, while also enabling them to feel quintessentially more British.
 

LooperCat

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As long as the fuel stations by the ports have the diesel capacity / availability to brim the tanks of 1,000s of HGVs all waiting... supply chain, etc...

I understand the plan the government is working on is that drivers of perishable / essential loads will be given special extra dark blue British passports so they can be flagged through immediately, while also enabling them to feel quintessentially more British.
I do hope the ration books are an especially nice shade of blue ;)
 

lmc

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Don't people understand scare mongering. So, the majority of diabetics in the UK are going to die due to lack of insulin. I read exactly the same about chemotherapy drugs. It is all political nonsense designed to scare everybody into thinking any deal is better than no deal. I am sure there will be lots of articles all over designed to scare all sorts of people whether they have medical problems or not.

Do people really believe that the EU will allow diabetics and cancer patients to die to make a political point? There would be world wide condemnation

This is a totally ridiculous story.

On another point, as someone on hypurin porcupine insulin, you can survive quite happily on this for decades and decades and decades and decades. There have been no independent trials showing that the various other insulins perform any better than animal insulins. As someone who has tried numerous insulins which do not work for me, only to go back to hypurin again, I no longer believe the hype around each new insulin that appears. I have heard it all many times before and it is never true for me.
 
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Mr_Pot

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Don't people understand scare mongering. So, the majority of diabetics in the UK are going to die due to lack of insulin. I read exactly the same about chemotherapy drugs. It is all political nonsense designed to scare everybody into thinking any deal is better than no deal. I am sure there will be lots of articles all over designed to scare all sorts of people whether they have medical problems or not.

Do people really believe that the EU will allow diabetics and cancer patients to die to make a political point? There would be world wide condemnation

This is a totally ridiculous story.

On another point, as someone on hypurin porcupine insulin, you can survive quite happily on this for decades and decades and decades and decades. There have been no independent trials showing that the various other insulins perform any better than animal insulins. As someone who has tried numerous insulins which do not work for me, only to go back to hypurin again, I no longer believe the hype around each new insulin that appears. I have heard it all many times before and it is never true for me.
Does Porcupine Insulin come with its own needles?
 

Draco16

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Don't people understand scare mongering. So, the majority of diabetics in the UK are going to die due to lack of insulin.

It's useful that your second sentence illustrates your first, when all he actually said was “Disruption to the supply chain is one of the ways that patients could be seriously disadvantaged. It could be a reality if we don’t get our act together. We can’t suddenly start manufacturing insulin — it’s got to be sorted, no question.”

Please link to where he says 2 million will die.

But yeah... bloody experts, being all expert n stuff!

Do people really believe that the EU will allow diabetics and cancer patients to die to make a political point? There would be world wide condemnation

Yes absolutely, politicians will ALWAYS act in peoples best interests... oh... er well this is awkward... austerity anyone?
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjopen/2017/...ts-linked-to-120000-excess-deaths-in-england/
 

lmc

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It's useful that your second sentence illustrates your first, when all he actually said was “Disruption to the supply chain is one of the ways that patients could be seriously disadvantaged. It could be a reality if we don’t get our act together. We can’t suddenly start manufacturing insulin — it’s got to be sorted, no question.”

Please link to where he says 2 million will die.

But yeah... bloody experts, being all expert n stuff!



Yes absolutely, politicians will ALWAYS act in peoples best interests... oh... er well this is awkward... austerity anyone?
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjopen/2017/...ts-linked-to-120000-excess-deaths-in-england/
I was taking the scare mongering to the ultimate conclusion. If you cannot get insulin, you will die. The whole point of the article was to inspire fear in diabetics.
He also said no insulin is made in the UK which shows how much of an expert he is! I
 
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Q4444

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We as an industrialised national have to import all our insulin what happened to our insulin producers? The market is geared to large scale production. We have had to see the production of inhaled insulin stopped,as there is no profit in it for the manufacturer. We are a smaller user of insulin, and the manufacturers want only large profits.
 
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