Question:
I always wonder when I hear the term "cure for diabetes". The
thought that always pops into my head is "Which one?". Seriously,
think about it for a minute. Any "cure" for diabetes is probably
not going to be for every diabetic. A cure for type 1 will most likely
never work on someone with type 2 and vice versus. Why? Well I think
most diabetics know why, but for those of you who do not let me explain
why.
There are different types of diabetes, the two most prevelant are type
1 and type 2. Although both are considered diabetes and the symptoms
are basically the same, the causes are different. So any cure would
have to take into account the causes of the disease.
In a nutshell, if you had a cure for type 1 diabetics that somehow
fixed their pancreas and they began secreting all the insulin they
needed, it would be great! But it would not cure someone with type 2
diabetes because most type 2 still make insulin but their bodies do not
react correctly to it.
Anyways to make a rant short, to cure diabetes you have to come up
with multiple cures. which leads me to wonder how much money is spent
on finding cures for each type of diabetes. It's not talked about
that I know of (I could just be dense and it is talked about) which
makes me feel like I am about to go off on a tangent and find out the
answer to my question. Cure For Diabetes type 2? Which One?
Answer:
It's a sad situation really. There's no hurry to cure diabetes. I'm type I
and would love to see a cure that was a real hands-off cure. No
immunosuppressive drugs, no regular visits to the clinic to have pancreatic
islet cells injected into my gut. But why should those with the most
resources to cure this disease (pharmaceutical companies) even bother. Look
at this excerpt from a paper from the Global Forum for Health Research (Nov.
2004):
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has compiled more precise and
detailed cost figures for the US, based on data from 1997. They estimate
the direct costs of diabetes in the US to be 44.1 billion dollars. This
includes costs for controlling blood glucose (7.7 billion dollars, 17.4%),
treating greater-than-normal rates of chronic complications (11.8 billion
dollars, 26.8%), and general medical conditions (24.6 billion dollars,
55.8%). On average, people with diabetes in the US incur nearly four times
as much in annual medical expenditures as compared to people without
diabetes: 10,071 dollars versus 2,669 dollars per person, respectively.
So if in 1997 we, diabetics, were dumping 44 billion dollars into the global
economy just to stay alive, well then we've got a darn profitable condition!
It's not just the pharmaceutical companies to blame; it's your doctors,
nurses, pharmacist, and insurance companies, everyone who works in
healthcare. It's huge industry. HUGE. And it isn't good business to shut
down a portion of your business that is booming.
The good news is that universities care more about making scientific
progress and helping people than making a buck. There is some good research
coming out that indicates our bodies may rebuild pancreatic cells every 3 to
4 months. The problem isn't with the pancreas; it's with the immune system.
The immune system keeps killing insulin producing cells. If we can get our
DNA to tell our immune systems to stop killing pancreatic cells, we might be
cured as soon as our pancreatic cells regenerate, (if they do indeed
regenerate.) Here are some resources for further reading.
Paper from excerpt above:
http://www.globalforumhealth.org/Forum8/Forum8-CDROM/OralPresentation...
Diabetes.doc
Pancreatic cell self-duplication article:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6987/full/nature02520.html
Stem cells transformed into insulin-producing cells:
http://www.burnham.org/default.asp?contentID=152
