Medicine From Animals

Subject: Medicine From Animals
From: GUEST,milkdud22
Date: 23 May 02 - 11:31 AM

I'm doing a research project for my zoology class and I can't find anything on my topic! My topic is medicine derived from animals and I can't find any good websites. If you know of any, or know of any medicines that come from animals, I'd love to hear from you! Thanks! -Milkdud

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: MMario
Date: 23 May 02 - 11:44 AM

check out serum vaccines, also pituitary extracts.

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Amos
Date: 23 May 02 - 11:48 AM

HEy, this place may be a zoo, but that doesn't mean we understand much about zoology; but I think there's a song about that somewhere:

Dunno much about zoology
Dunno much epistomology
Dunno what a Planck constant's for
Dunno who was the greatest Bohr
But I do know that I think you're great!
And if you should just reciprocate
What a polysyllabic concatenation of admiration that would be!!

Or something like that...

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Jeri
Date: 23 May 02 - 12:07 PM

You'd find a lot of information if you looked for uses of various venoms. Here's a link to a Google search on a medicine made from toad venom: bufenolide.

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Sorcha
Date: 23 May 02 - 12:10 PM

Insulin
Estrogen (mares)

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Scabby Douglas
Date: 23 May 02 - 12:11 PM

Don't we get Oinkment from pigs?

(sorry)

Cheers

Steven

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Wolfgang
Date: 23 May 02 - 12:24 PM

But you may also stray from modern medicine and look under headings like 'traditional medicine', e.g. 'traditional chines medicine'. Many of these medicines use animal parts in their practices, e.g. ground rhinozeros horn for erectile dysfunction.

And the times in which European doctors prescribed e.g. fox lung for those who were short of breath when walking quickly are only slightly more than hundred years away.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 May 02 - 12:25 PM

If you go to google and enter in this phrase, "medicines derived from animals" you will get all kinds of links.

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 24 May 02 - 09:51 AM

The antiseptic baby and the prophylactic pup
Where playing the garden when the bunny ambled up
They looked upon the creature with a loathing undisguised
He wasn't disinfected and he wasn't sanitized.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: MMario
Date: 24 May 02 - 09:56 AM

cute! Sounds like something from "Space child's Mother Goose

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 24 May 02 - 10:25 AM

Wasn't INSULIN originally extracted from sheep, before they learnt how to synthesize it ?

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 May 02 - 12:49 PM

re insuline:

The most common sources for insulin, at least by the time it was more than a laboratory curiosity, were pork (swine) and horse (equine) sources. So far as my "fairly modern" references indicate, insulin from sheep has not been commonly used since at least the 1950s(?). At least one company still produces insulin from pork (Betin H by Lilly). Other "large animal" sources have been pretty much eliminated due to the frequency of allergic reaction to the "animal" components.

Depending on your definition of animal, most "modern" insulins still are an animal - bacteria - product. Bacteria that have been genetically modifed to produce "real" human insulin are the source for most insulin used today.

John

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: English Jon
Date: 24 May 02 - 12:58 PM

And it's far less reliable than the pork derived stuff. Blood sugar goes all over the place.

EJ

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: gnu
Date: 24 May 02 - 01:01 PM

I thought porcine insulin was the "good" stuff. I have seen TV news programs where the synthetic stuff is not as reliable and (almost) killing people who have been on porcine insulin for years.

Amos... excellent... almost ROTF !

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 May 02 - 01:28 PM

LOL...good one, garg!

While there are, thankfully, plenty of alternatives to the hormone Premarin, it is interesting to note it was named for its source, pregnant mares' urine.

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 May 02 - 01:56 PM

It is certainly true that different people react differently to a particular medical product. Porcine insulin has continued in production because it does seem to work better for some people. It is much more expensive to produce, and the supply is somewhat limited by the need for someone to eat the rest of the pig.

For the great majority of diabetics, the human-analog insulin produced from bacterial sources provides the necessary control, if used appropriately and with the necessary other "good things" that diabetics need to do.

With the increasing number of people being diagnosed as diabetic and needing insulin, it is something of a medical miracle that a cheaper, and relatively unlimited, supply from bacteria is now available, and for most diabetics, it works. There are not enough pigs to supply all of those who now need insulin. Within my memory, I have known diabetics who suffered consequences considered unnecessary and preventable today because there was not enough insulin available for them to get insulin in the amounts that would be used today.

The pig is considered the "medically most human" animal, and allergic reactions to porcine medical products are not too common, but they do occur. Because allergic reactions can be triggered by repeated exposure to things that were not originally a problem, use of any "animal" derived product requires constant concern about the possiblity of changes in response.

Allergic reactions - or other unfavorable "body responses" - are much less frequent for the analog insulins, although even with these there are times when something else works better. Diabetes is one condition that virtually demands continual consultation with persons trained in its medical management - and serious effort by the patient in maintaining control and in adapting to changes in the condition.

'nuf soapbox.

John

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: Mudlark
Date: 24 May 02 - 02:05 PM

Armour Thyroid....

Subject: RE: Medicine From Animals
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 25 May 02 - 02:17 AM

Sorry - I did not credit the verse. It was one of my family's favorites and therefore, thought it "common Knowledge. It was meant as a polite reminder.

Strictly Germ-proof

From: Modern American Poetry

Written By: Arthur Guiterman

THE Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup
Were playing in the garden when the Bunny gamboled up;
They looked upon the Creature with a loathing undisguised;—
It wasn't Disinfected and it wasn't Sterilized.
They said it was a Microbe and a Hotbed of Disease;
5 They steamed it in a vapor of a thousand-odd degrees;
They froze it in a freezer that was cold as Banished Hope
And washed it in permanganate with carbolated soap.
In sulphurated hydrogen they steeped its wiggly ears;
They trimmed its frisky whiskers with a pair of hard-boiled shears;
They donned their rubber mittens and they took it by the hand

And elected it a member of the Fumigated Band.
There's not a Micrococcus in the garden where they play;
They bathe in pure iodoform a dozen times a day;
And each imbibes his rations from a Hygienic Cup—
The Bunny and the Baby and the Prophylactic Pup.