do you realise what you, and that whole website, sound like?: waa waa, I can't use analogue insulin, so no-one else should have the opportunity!
Is it just lantus you have an issue with, or all analogue insulins? If your diabetes clinic are useless, and didn't explain the possible side effects of insulins, and that the analogue insulins are new, (mine explained both, and refused to prescribe lantus as a first choice due to the possible cancer risk) I hope you made a formal complaint about them. Did you? If people accept poor treatment from the NHS the NHS will never improve.
Metformin made me ill, it made me very bloated and then very sick every few weeks, so was very dangerous for me to take with insulin, as the throwing up would start at night, after I had eaten and injected novorapid (oh noes made by evil NovoNordisk, from evil GM organisms! evil evil), and after I had taken my night time dose of levemir (oh noes made by evil etc etc). This made me go very low, I assume none or very little of the food had been digested. So I had to stop taking metformin. Does this mean I have set up an anti-metformin propaganda website? No, I haven't. Metformin helps a lot of people, if I can't take it that doesn't mean other people should be put off from taking it.
I honestly thought the iddt website was some kind of joke when I first read it. I can't be bothered to reread it and I don't want to increase there number of page views, but the most idiotic things I read on there were:
- they were hosting an article by a doctor who was recommending just urine tests for controlling insulin dependant diabetes. How on earth do they think it is acceptable to host such dangerous advice?
- they complain about human insulins being called 'human', as they do not come from humans. Did they honestly think that the insulin companies had a human abattoir out back where they killed people and harvested their insulin?
- then they complain about some insulin company dropping the 'human' part of some insulin name! make up,your minds, do you want it called human or not?
- they go on and on about genetic modifcation. Do they not realise this is how many things are made? Almost all cheese you encounter in this country will have vegetarian rennet, which is made from GM bacteria, for example. Do they think that eating cheese will make you grow two heads or something? I really don't know what their issue is here really.
- I just looked at the front page, they now have a petition against mixtard being withdrawn. Do they have an alternative manufacturer in mind (I'm not going back to look as I don't want to increase page views)? NovoNordisk exist to make money, like any other company, they can't be forced to make a product they don't think is profitable enough.
- many times on that website it says analogue insulins can kill. Of course they can, they are insulin. If they couldn't kill, they'd be pretty useless, as their function is to lower blood sugar, which can be fatal. Interestingly, nowhere does it say some of the hypos and deaths caused by people changing from animal to analogue insulins will be due to people not reducing the number of units taken when changing from animal to analogue insulins, which should always be done. Why does it not mention that this should be done? It's very useful and important information.
There were many other ridiculous things on that website, but as I said I'm not going to increase their page views by re-reading them in detail.
The website also has lots of very useful and important information, eg I saw just now a hospital insulin checklist thing on the front page, that is very important to have, so you can keep control of your medication if you are in hospital. Also like you say it lists possible side effects, which are also useful to know. It's just has a lot of other mad insane nonsense too, it reads like some conspiracy theory website, which is a shame.