Actually, “being let down” is exactly what we are most accustomed to. We’ve been hearing since at least the 70s (probably longer) that the actual “cure” is 5 years away. The boy can only cry wolf so many times before excitement becomes difficult to sustain.
And the distinction is not a semantic one; it’s rooted in the real world. The differences are real, and cautionary, and being objective requires that the appropriate caution be exercised. When a real breakthrough occurs, it will be cause for fireworks and celebration. But it serves nobody’s interest to pull that trigger prematurely. It just increases the possiblity of yet another in a depressingly long series of “letdowns”.
I suspect that there wasn’t a lot of excitement because “breakthroughs” in treating D in mice are not something new. Neither is the knowledge that, when it comes to D, mice and humans are much more dissimilar than they are similar.
While I believe in the power of hope, I believe much more in the power of being realistic (while remaining hopeful, if at all possible). I suspect that if you continue to experience excitement-generating levels of hope over these types of “advancements”, you are going to deplete your hope “stores” to a dangerously low level, and that would not be good. Like I mentioned earlier, I have held onto as much hope as possible by not getting excited about anything until Joshua Levy gets excited. I respect how he reserves feeling hopeful for discoveries that are realistically deserving of his hope…
Nothing new to anyone BUT ME! Effective immediately, this is no longer a “new” thing to me. Future articles of this kind will be met with skeptical enthusiasm. lol
Wow, I just realized we totally hijacked Hannah’s thread! Not sure why these responses ended up here and not in the thread I created earlier with the new treatment study. Sorry Hannah!
I think pigs and monkeys are probably pretty good model systems…but they’re expensive, take too long to reproduce and there are certainly more ethical issues associated with primates. As with all things, it sort of depends on what you’re testing. In some ways a mouse will be more similar to us than a pig, while in others, a pig would be a better bet. The other issue is that there is a disease model for T1D in mice (streptozotocin exposure), which is caused by a relatively simple exposure, which sort of begs the question of whether it’s also simpler to fix. They basically are poisoning the beta cells directly, not inducing the auto-immune attack in the exact same way we experience as humans. Similar to how we can create a model of “depression” in mice but it’s not a perfect match.
Obviously animal studies are a first step, but the real issue is that people in the news media (like me) should be leery of mouse studies in general. I do cover them if it’s a huge breakthrough, or it’s just such a novel technique that it’s shown what could be possible in a whole new way. Or if we have no other research on a topic except in mice. The issue is not with researchers studying mice, the issue is with that press release suggesting it’s super newsworthy, IMO.
You’ve gotten lots of great replies and I don’t have anything to add, but I think it’s funny because I was texting back and forth for several weeks with another young woman who was dxd in med school and was going through a lot of the same stuff. She ended up winning an award in her class, so just further proof diabetics rock! Much luck to you on this journey!
