Health: Your Drug Was Discontinued

Eli Lilly was the last U.S. manufacturer of animal insulin, which is extracted from the pancreatic tissue of cows and pigs and has been used by diabetics for more than a half-century. Lilly stopped selling the drug in March, and its last batch expired April 1. From now on, it will sell only synthetic human insulin produced by recombinant-DNA technology.

The problem, according to patient-advocacy groups, is that some people cannot tolerate synthetic insulin. They say patients develop resistance to it or suffer adverse reactions that can be severe, even fatal. Such patients are few, but those few...

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