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UK Doctors Cure Type 1 Diabetes
ayden writes "The BBC is
reporting that a 61-year-old man has become the first person in the UK to be cured of type 1 diabetes thanks to a groundbreaking cell-transplant technique.
More
info
here."
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Agreed. I'm also at risk for developing diabetes. Hopefully we'll see the method mature and grow more effective.
On a side note, if they can extract the pancreas cells from dead donors, then why do they claim to have a major shortage of them? I imagine that they only need to borrow a small sliver of the dead donor's pancreas and not the whole whopper, so one dead donor can help cure tens, maybe hundreds of afflicted patients? But then again I have no idea how many people in the UK don't mind donating their organs after they're dead. Personally I see no reason not to. Spread the love, share the life! =D
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
...I see is the need for three pancreases for the process - it'd take a lot of donations to cure every Type 1 Diabetic out there. Stiil, they interviewed the guy on the radio, and he seems happy that he's got the flexibility, so its still an improvement (drugs compared to needles - tough choice)
This is a cure for type I. Type I is what you get as a kid when your body never makes enough insulin. Type II is what you get when you consume so much sugar your body can't produce enough insulin.
Drink that Super Big Gulp and you will add to your chance of getting type II, which isn't covered by this treatment. (Not to mention all the other unhealthy things about soda in general)
The articles linked only say that this patient received three transplants. Nothing more.
Where is your source for the conclusion that every patient is going to need three transplants?
For all these brief articles tell us, maybe one procedure would be sufficient for a diabetic in better condition; Mr Lane sounded in pretty bad shape (falling into comas on a semi-regular basis) to this here diabetic.
For that matter, where do you get the "1 donated pancreas" == "1 islet cell transplant" equation? That's a mighty big leap to make given these scanty articles.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Now if pop can do that, imagine what it does inside you! Pepsi works too.
I'm sure stomach acid would work at least as well as a toilet bowl cleaner. Imagine what *that* does inside of you. Oh, wait.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Yeah ok. You sure it wasn't a friend of your brother-in-law's uncle's neighbor from down the street?
On a side note, if they can extract the pancreas cells from dead donors, then why do they claim to have a major shortage of them?
Society is screwed up. Organ donation should be opt-out, not opt-in.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Seriously, without antibiotics, has there been ANY medical advance in the past 50+ years?
For all intents and purposes, the answer is no.
Of course, the pedant would argue the semantics of the word "medical", and offer up examples like
But if you define "medical breakthrough" as something along the lines of "a chemical [non-mechanical] agent that cures [not just treats the symptoms of] a disease [as opposed to a mechanical injury, like a broken bone, or a blocked artery]", then the hundreds of billions [trillions?] of dollars spent on "medical research" in the post WWII era by the western world has been, for all intents and purposes, an utter and complete waste of money.And if the "cure" for Type I Diabetes described here is nothing more than a partial pancreatic transplant in combination with an aggressive regimen of anti-rejection drugs, then I wouldn't classify it as a "medical" breakthrough - rather, it's just a new surgical technique.
PS: If you [or a loved one] ever get really, really sick, keep in mind that the only person who stands a chance in hell of doing anything beneficial for you is a surgeon, not a medical doctor.
PPS: Antibiotics, the true "medical" breakthrough of the 20th century, are primarily a tool of the surgeon, not the medical doctor.
Yeah, I hear dose lemons contain acid too. You can't trust nuthin dese days.
Well, we're still managing to just hold on for most antibiotics, and the medical community is getting a little more creative in other forms of bacteriocidal and bacteriostatic treatments.
In addition, we could always start looking into the Soviet programmes on bacteriophages. They had large stocks they were developing, and they were quite useful. Bacteriophages are basically viruses that attack bacteria - and will do the job of antibiotics in many cases.
Even with the scares of multiple drug resistant microbes, I think knowledge of proteomics and chemical engineering is growing fast enough that we'll soon have some new last resort antibiotics to replace the ones that are beginning to fail now.