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BUT WE'VE GONE TO THE MOON!?

GrantGam

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,603
Location
Scotland
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Globally, we have the knowledge and "finances" to send astronauts into outer space and land on our own moon...

We have sent robots to Mars; and satellites further afield - exploring our Cosmos when we barely know anything about our own planet!?

I find it amusing how we had the "basic tech" to get to the moon in the 60's, but we still have not found an answer for definite prevention or a cure for diabetes... I think if the right organisations and respective brains worked towards such a goal; the results would be astounding! Maybe too boring for the corporate giants and/or not lucrative enough.

Children growing up may dream of going to space one day, and good for them - aim high, dream big! I however, just want to eat a sandwich without an injection.... It's not much to ask, and something 21st century man is MORE THAN capable of. It's just a shame that chronic diseases are boring and not as lucrative as other first world pursuits. Shame really.

Honestly though, if we keep up the current mediocre attitude towards researching towards a cure. How long are we going to have to wait? It's clear that in the privatised, profit driven Western world that we live - medical giants WILL NOT work together to find an answer to diabetes. The problem which is ruining the lives of millions of people!

Rant over, lunch time! Better not forget to bolus for my sandwich though...
 
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I was discussing why we don't have a cure for Type 1 yet with a family member the other day. I was having a bad day and just wanted to keep saying "why is it so bl@@dy hard to work out how to cure it?!"

Every time I see a headline that says "Exciting breakthrough in search for cure for Type 1" I still get a little surge of excitement - and then read it and feel down.

I do take comfort in the fact that organisations like JDRF are working hard to find a cure.

As an aside, the fact that we also don't know what causes Type 1 is a huge source of frustration to me as a parent.
 
azure said:
Every time I see a headline that says "Exciting breakthrough in search for cure for Type 1" I still get a little surge of excitement - and then read it and feel down.
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Likewise, the headlines are amazing - and then slightly anti-climatic towards the end of the article. But then, the headline has done it's job properly hasn't it...?

I think an organisation made up exclusively of diabetics (with adequate knowledge of the existing orginisations) would find a cure quicker
 
I agree. I do like to read about the few researchers with Type 1 or those who have children with Type 1 as I feel, rightly or wrongly, they have a fiercer drive.
 
azure said:
I agree. I do like to read about the few researchers with Type 1 or those who have children with Type 1 as I feel, rightly or wrongly, they have a fiercer drive.
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You've hit the nail on the head!

A good example of what you've mentioned would be the OpenAPS project. I've read about Dana and Scott and also of a father who built one for his son. As cool as it is, it's so frustrating how these individuals can do this from home, with a relatively small budget and moderate application of available tech. You would ASSUME that the big pharma's could achieve a LOT more, given their bottomless budgets, large employee base, etc, etc...
 
I'm not sure why we think that Pharma would solve the curing T1D (or any other thing for that matter)? Pharma makes drugs to "treat" conditions/illnesses. They also make money.

All the research that is done into physiological issues generally comes out of universities and government/charity funded schemes. Seeing some of the recent talks at a JDRF discovery day, we still don't fully understand the various aspects of the diabetes "Why you get it", even with the various tools that are now available. Knowing where to start has always been the most difficult part, and it's really only in recent years that we've got to the point where we can do things like separate out T-cells to try and find the ones that attack our pancreases.

I think both we and our HCPs are perhaps a little over-optimistic about the tools that we have (even now) in trying to determine what's going wrong in order to develop a fix. We've seen a few attempted fixes that we know only partially work, so we are still trying, but I think, as with anything physiological, it's actually a lot harder than we could ever consider!

On the technological responses, the only reason we can do OpenAPS and Loop is precisely because it's not big pharma or big medical. There's no liability involved and no regulation. Our time to market and ability to undertake change is far faster than that of anyone that needs to deal with legislation and liability. It's really only in recent times and as a result of the use of the open source products that the FDA has got anywhere near comfortable with the big medtech companies producing these things.
 
The headline did do its job - you read the article.
 
tim2000s said:
I'm not sure why we think that Pharma would solve the curing T1D (or any other thing for that matter)? Pharma makes drugs to "treat" conditions/illnesses. They also make money.
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Yeah you're right. There would be zero benefit in a pharmaceutical company having any interest in curing a chronic condition. It would destroy their income...
 
One reason and one reason only ££££££££££££££££££$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$`s
People in the diabetes community, desperate for a cure, sometimes express considerable paranoia about the goals of the pharmaceutical industry.After all, with $132 billion expended each year for diabetes care in the United States alone, the manufacturers of drugs and diabetes products make serious money off the disease. Do they, then, have any incentive to find a cure for it?Think about it: diabetes has now reached “epidemic” proportions and is a lifelong disease. This makes it, in the words of DiabetesinControl.com publisher Steven Freed, the “perfect disease.”
For the pharmaceutical industry, that is. 49 years ive been waiting for a cure the only difference for me being instead of injecting insulin with a glass syringe and an all steel needle and having to boil sterilize them i now use a pen and the great help of a blood meter instead of measuring urine and water into a test tube and adding a caustic soda tablet and hoping to hell it would turn blue and not the dreaded orange...Still with all that and a decent diet and plenty of exercise ive made it to 62 yeras old and not one single complication
 
Hopefully one day, or something

Hopefully one day or something very close, but It wont be in my life time, maybe in my granddaughters life <3
 
At another forum where I am a member, we have a team crunching numbers for the World Community Grid, it has been mostly cancer research looking for a cure. There are other serious diseases that we process as well ranging from Aids to Zika.

In the length of time I have been doing this I have never seen any diabetes data offered . Surely there must be diabetes researchers out there that could use a lot of the computer power that is freely available from home users.

Edit: Perhaps @Administrator or other staff might be able to throw some light on this.
 
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I was thinking the same. Any ideas how/from where to start?
 
Nnora said:
I was thinking the same. Any ideas how/from where to start?
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I could look after the electrics and electronics of our head office, providing our head office was on a boat Besides that, I make okay tea and coffee!
 
GrantGam1337 said:
I could look after the electrics and electronics of our head office, providing our head office was on a boat Besides that, I make okay tea and coffee!
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Hahaha
Well that's something But why on a boat?!
 
Well, for Type 2, it all goes back to genetics. Some people have a super pancreas where the cells are robust and replace themselves sufficiently (like my 94 year old mother-in-law who eats refined carbs like mad and is none the worse for it). Others are not so lucky (like me), the cells don't want to replace themselves as efficiently and make one susceptible to the onslaught of the refined carbohydrate western diet - thus causing the increasing downward spiral of metabolic derangement that is Type 2. Most likely a cure, will come in the form of genetic modification via something like CRISPR technology - if gene therapy could fix my deficient genes, I'd be happy to become a GMO!
 
I became a type 1 diabetic in January 1959 after a bout of Asian flu. My mother told the consultant that her mother became a diabetic after suffering from flu and she believed this had caused me to develop the disease. (My maternal grandmother died from diabetes in 1924.) The consultant told her that her theory was rubbish but statistics show that after a flu epidemic more people are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes so there has to be a connection.
Of course the pharmaceutical industry won't be willing to spend millions on finding a cure. They make their millions out of this disease/condition. However, universities such as Imperial College and UCL are working on this and maybe one day they will hit the jackpot but I somehow doubt it. After all if part of the pancreas has been destroyed how can you rejuvenate it?
I am grateful that managing diabetes is so much easier today than it was in the 1960s. Having had this condition for nearly 60 years it is part and parcel of my life. Being widowed I live alone and have to care for myself. I am rarely ill so I must be doing something right!
 
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