Where is the emphasis in the search for a cure?

On the other hand, anything that would reduce the amount of diabetes management that I have to do daily would be a right step towards a cure.

At the moment, possibly more important to me is a prevention – i.e. a vaccine that once given would prevent diabetes from ever occuring. This way, I would no longer have to worry about the possibility of my children developing diabetes.

I wouldn’t mind an artificial pancreas, the perfect close-looped system, but I do not think that we today understand even half of the factors that influence our blood glucose values. Today our doctors only seem to talk about insulin, exercise, stress and food as the elements that influence bg values. My last blog entry at http://chrissieinbelgium.blogspot.com discusses exactly THIS point! Yes these four elements DO definitely influence our bg values but other things do too, and we have very little understanding ot these “other things”. How can we create a perfect closed loop system if we do not understand how the hormone produced by our BONES affect our bg values? Please see the article linked in my blog entry. If the mechanism behind our bg values is much more complicated than previously thought, how can we produce the artificial pancreas until we fully understand the background mechanism?

Concerning stem cell transplants, I certainly do not want to trade off diabetes for the negative side effects of immuno-repressive drugs! I don’t want one illness instead of another!

Stem cell research is of course interesting, but again stem cells become easily cancerous….. And there are so many people with diabetes worldwide – how can we help everyone?!

Islet cell regeneration is coupled with the problem that pobably after the islet cells are regenerated, our body may not know how to regulate the amount of insulin that needs to be produced. In other words, even if we can again produce insulin, our body must know how much and when it is necessary to produce the insulin. I think this was also discussed in the linked article.

So OK, what does this mean? Should we stop trying? Of course not! But we have a long way to go. ….and that is the magic of science – perhaps one day we will discover the missing links and all will fit together perfectly! Sometimes a missing link just pops up out of the blue and all is solved very, very quickly.

I’ve been thinking about this alot too, since I just finished reading Cheating Destiny (which I saw was on yours and a bunch of other people’s book meme a few weeks ago).

To me, a cure is not having to worry about any of this. No machines, no maintenance , nothing. It’s not having to think about what you body is doing and not trying to replicate something that it isn’t doing.

To me anything that involves machines and medicine that you have to keep using on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis is not a cure. Machines and medicines inevitably fail. (of course, so did Riley’s own pancreas)

To me a cure is irradication of the disease all together. A treatment that stops the immune response and some way to regenerate beta cells is what I’m hoping for. I’ve always been a dreamer.

The affordable, accessible, reliable, minimally invasive, did I mention reliable?, complication-preventing, management tool that does not require additional medications with their own side effects would be acceptable.

Which is why I’m hoping for a cure.

Anything but the cessation of Diabetes is just another form of management.

Not saying that I wouldn’t embrace any of them though – but I wouldn’t consider them a cure. The only cure in my mind, is a procedure, injection, drug, whatever – that eliminates Diabetes in its entirety putting the body back to normal. Sounds impossible at this point in time though – but I never say never

For me, the cure would be to retrain my immune system, then replace my islets. Hopefully that would lead to the complete end of my diabetic life. Sounds so simple, and it is still so far away.

Like Shannon, a cure is a complete cessation of diabetes. Islet cells that work, a pancreas that functions. Full stop. Not a closed loop, not transplants or implants or any of that. That’s not to say I wouldn’t embrace any or all of those things as treatments but for me, they wouldn’t be a cure. Just a better management system.

I think a cure would be trading insulin, etc., for something like a weekly or monthly injection. The injection (whatever is in it) would keep your pancreas functioning so your blood sugars were controlled.

What’s a ‘real‘ cure? Taking a single treatment (pill, injection, surgical intervention) and never having to worry about diabetes again in your life. Call me a cynic, but that won’t happen.

I’d take the weekly or monthly shot for the CRAP I have to put up with now.