THE JOURNAL & TOPICS NEWSPAPERS | WEEK OF JULY 13, 2008
New Research Could Be Key To Curing Diabetes
By MAUREEN PEKOSH
Recently a neighbor mentioned she had been told by a doctor that there was a cure for diabetes but that diabetes was too much of an industry for an inexpensive cure to be readily provided to the millions of children and adults suffering daily. Much as there is nothing in the world I want more than a cure for diabetes, I discounted this information because surely I would have heard something if this were really true.
A few days ago I got an e-mail from a diabetes chat group that there were clinical trials for a diabetes cure for humans currently underway and in need of funding. That got my attention. Could it be that there is an end in sight to the constant finger pricks, shots, and battles over snacks that my daughter and millions of other people deal with daily?! With the daily bombardment of e-mails I get from diabetes related organizations, why had I not heard about this previously?
Dr. Denise Faustman from Harvard Medical School has successfully reversed diabetes in mice. Mice blood is similar to human blood; the diabetes the mice had was very similar to Type 1 or Juvenile Diabetes. Diabetes is the inability to produce or effectively use insulin. Without insulin individuals who have diabetes cannot get energy from the food they eat. Their blood sugar increases unless controlled with insulin injections or an insulin pump. Type 1 diabetes usually occurs in children. Its cause is unknown. It is a life sentence of blood sugar checking, carbohydrate counting, and insulin shots.
Dr. Faustman used a relatively inexpensive drug that has been around for 80 years and is used in the tuberculosis vaccine. She did not have to deal with any ethical issues pertaining to stem cells. She did not have to deal with transplants, anti-rejection drugs and potential donor shortages. She seems to be taking a path of least resistance, yet she is struggling for funding because of huge resistance from the established diabetes research community.
Her work sounds so promising yet the clinical trials are not being funded by any of the well known diabetes organizations, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the American Diabetes Association, or the National Institutes for Health. Lee Iacocca is trying to raise the $11 million dollars needed to fund these trials because his wife suffered from type 1 diabetes. He understands what life with diabetes is like and what a cure really means to millions of children and adults.
Dr. Faustman believes that it is abnormal blood cells that cause a person to no longer be able to make insulin. Dr. Faustman used the drug BCG to kill the abnormal white blood cells in mice. This initial study will test if this drug has the same effect in humans - will it get rid of the white blood cells which may be blocking the body's ability to normally produce insulin and reverse diabetes. If it proves successful, it is estimated that a cure for type 1 diabetes could be readily available in about four years.
Lee Iacocca told a diabetes publication that he feels, "It just seems that nobody's anxious for a breakthrough." I found this shocking and hard to believe until I started looking at diabetes as an industry and not a personal struggle.
There are roughly 23.6 million people with diabetes, approximately 10 percent of those having type 1. In the United States diabetes was a $174 billion dollar industry last year. Many companies' bottom lines were affected by sales of insulin, test strips, syringes, insulin pumps, monitors, and other diabetes supplies. Funds are raised for research, education, and increased awareness. Multiple publications and Internet sites caution millions of diabetics how best to live with their disease. There is a shortage of endocrinologists because there is a rise in the number of cases of diabetes.
If diabetes is cured what will happen to the earnings of the many companies who profit because of diabetes? It shouldn't matter. Everyone should want to cure this disease because it is costly, hard to live with, and kills many of its victims because of its numerous complications. The savings in terms of human struggles and lives should clearly outweigh dollars and cents.
Some people who suffer with diabetes daily have started to believe that the diabetes industry does not want to find a cure because they do not want to let go of their guaranteed revenue stream. For this reason they believe that Dr. Faustman's work is being underreported and under funded. A doctor who performed research on reversing diabetes in mice share with me that the problem is not just in reversing the diabetes, but finding a source of insulin producing cells once produced by the pancreas that have been destroyed in type 1 diabetics. While Dr. Faustman's research showed mice obtaining these cells from their spleens, this part of her research could not be duplicated. For this reason, many in the established diabetes research industry have not yet gotten as excited about her work.
Diabetes has become a sizable chunk of our economic engine. Foundations that raise money also provide outreach, funds for research, education, fundraising, and general management. JDRF is proud of the fact that it only spends 14 percent of its budget on fundraising and general management. Yet that 14 percent accounts for $28 million. $28 million probably funds a lot of salaries. Are there really people who look at a cure for diabetes just like a decrease in air travel - a possible personal job and salary loss?
Sadly, there is not yet a cure for diabetes. There are multiple theories being investigated and most researchers who have started down one path probably will not easily switch to another line of thought unless there is overwhelming evidence prompting them to do so. Hopefully all the great minds dedicated to finding a cure will remain open minded about all possible avenues toward finding that cure as quickly as possible.