This is a conversation that I had today at lunched. Now, some of you may agree and some of you will disagree, strongly. The discussion was brought up about the $100 million Obama is going to send to the care of Haiti. The question was posed to me, “Doesn’t that piss you off that they send $100 million to another country, and that money could be spent on diabetes research?” Now, I didn’t know how to answer this question at first. Of course I don’t want to see anybody have to suffer, but I also see the side that my tax money could go to something like research instead. So, my answer was, “well, there will never be a cure.”
And then the conversation went on with my explaining why, which I will here as well. And it can be summed it very easily. You think we are in a recession now? Find a cure to diabetes and see what kind of recession we hit. How would scientists that spent their whole life searching for a cure and doing studies about diabetes get a paycheck if there was a cure? How would they pay their bills. How would the stores they shop at be affected. How would the people that work for diabetes companies and products make a living? It would hit our economy harder than just about anything.
Do I hope for a cure, of course! Do I still donate funds and do volunteer work, of course. But realistically, no, I don’t think it is likely. There will be advancements in the management of it and there will be tools that may make it easier to live with diabetes and maybe even ways to rid yourself of all complications, but never a cure. Companies can still make money off of advancements, but not off of a cure.
But like I said before, this thought will not stop me from doing what I can to help find one.
Do any of you share this same feeling?
The American Diabetes Association seems to agree. In November 2009, a tiny committee of self-selected “experts” issued a consensus statement (See http://bit.ly/7MiDos for that) that essentially argues that there will never be a cure for any type of diabetes, but this is meant to be more of a discussion point than a final statement on the topic. We should also keep in mind that this was a self-appointed group that stands to loose their livelihoods if a cure for any type of diabetes should occur, so we can’t take their perspective too seriously. The advent of autoimmunity treatments now in late-stage development (most are in Phase III clinical trials) could profoundly change the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Even if periodic re-treatment is required, most type 1 patients would probably argue that is light-years ahead of multiple daily glucose tests and injections, especially if it eliminates adverse events from insulin, notably hypoglycemia.
Definitely agree. I’ve not thought so much about that perspective – the researchers losing their jobs – I’ve more thought about all the companies that make money from diabetes treatments. The meter/strip companies, the insulin companies, all those places that make “diabetic” foods or socks or vitamins or whatever. Curing diabetes would not be profitable. It’s not going to happen.
While I agree that the greater profitability of forever selling and re-selling treatments for diabetes exceeds the likely financial gains of finding a one-off cure, I think another factor is more important in preventing a cure for diabetes, and that is the so-called ‘Valley of Death’ phenomenon. This term refers to the intermediate phase between the first indication of a potential cure in medicine based on basic research and the final phase of actually developing and bringing to market a curative treatment based on that initial indication. In this gap all sorts of interferences develop that prevent basic science insights from becoming cures, such as lack of funding, disinterest of researchers in the tedious work of tinkering to perfect the treatment from its scientific basis, and the massive regulatory hurdles of the FDA and similar regulatory agencies in countries outside the U.S. The result is that you will constantly find yourself reading about optimistic cure reports in the press but you will never see any of those developed into actual treatments.
This is a very interesting take on this. Thanks for your insight.