Good Nurse Price mentioned possibly diluting insulin to give to gerbils, but
as Kelly is not available (working back to back shifts and such. She's
snoozing.) I figured I'd take a crack at it. Armed with a lot of diabetes
study (my mother got diabetes, so I learned a lot about the disease) and a
regular reader of Kelly's CE, here's my educated layman's guess - The body
weight is too great. Insulin is reasonably dangerous in humans, who can use
thier own judgement in dosing, and test themselves. Large dogs respond well
to treatment too, but they're like treating a kid. You know when they eat,
and they weigh enough to take a shot.
The "theraputic range" for insulin in a gerbil (that is, the range at which
the treatment is effective without hurting the patient) is going to be so
narrow given thier size that computing and dosing it would probably take
labratory conditions. It's probably possible, but it isn't likely to
happen.
C. Keil
GML Poet Laureate
