there’s a research clinic in my town that takes people for trials. has anyone here done that and how did it go?
hope to get back to work in a few weeks and then won’t have time but when I retire might consider it.
That’s entirely dependent on the specific trial you participate in, which makes it very hard to make a comparison.
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I’ve applied, but never gotten in. They always have soooo many criteria that you have to meet in order to be included. You can call, but prepare for the fact that they are often looking for very specific study subjects.
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I participated in a study that lasted over two years from the moment of my diabetes onset (this was actually a selection criterion) in one of the premier T1D research centers in the country (Yale-New Haven Hospital) and have only the best things to say about the experience!
In addition to contributing to science directly, I loved the close monitoring and amazing education I got by the study team immediately after diagnosis. My outlook on how to manage this disease and especially what are “normal” levels and targets was shaped during that formative time by people on the knowledge frontier. Even though since then I have moved and now only have access to “average” endos, my own self-efficacy and the control I have been able to achieve remain the direct result of being in that study, for which I will be forever grateful. Periodically I look for other research opportunities and will gladly sign up for any I am eligible for again, but unfortunately where I live now (or even nearby) I have seen nothing appropriate.
Good luck to you!
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I have done a few and asked to do many more that I did not get into. I love doing them. However, it is a matter of some trial and error and it takes trust. All you can do is apply, but do not expect a breakthrough or a life changing outcome. Mostly these things do not get to market and if they do you will not recognize them because you encounter them in generic markings.
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I have also done many and also been refused many. The criteria that must be meet for each study is hard and also different. And if you meet all but one of the criteria you will still be denied. So it is very hard to get in to one. That being said, I also love being in one because you are watched every step of the way. And while I have a great medical team of my own, having other endocrinologist watching you is so helpful. Second opinions are always good. And getting medical supplies for free is also great. I currently have my Dexcom supplies covered and haven’t had to pay for anything for 11/2 years. Great for he medical budget. They also pay for all the test strips and meter. If you can and you research what is being done, I say give it a try.
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So much medical research into finding a cure for diabetes is an utter waste of money, devoted more to satisfying the idle curiosity of nerds than helping patients, that I would be extremely reluctant to participate in any. I read countless research articles, and so often I read something like "The Relation of Uric Acid Levels in Type 1 Diabetics to Rates of Finger Nail Growth,’ and then I look to the end to see something like, “The authors wish to thank the ‘Walk for a Cure Foundation’ for Funding this Research,” and all I can think is, if only the poor people spending their Saturdays on the ‘Walk for a Cure’ knew how their efforts were being wasted!
I am really sorry to see such a pessimistic take on research (and even more so on supporting research by non-scientists)…
To me this is a very limited way of seeing science and how it works in practice. Small blocks of knowledge are critical for big questions to be answered. No researcher can jump into “And how do we cure diabetes” as a practical question (and not just because it’s a complicated condition and human beings happen to live in various (hard to control and randomize) unique circumstances when presenting with it), but parceling small bits and figuring out first observational correlations and then causal mechanism of various aspects of the disease does give us some hope.* I understand that for any one of us in our limited lifetime this might sound too remote and even irrelevant, but we need to keep the big picture in mind. Science is a slow-moving river, for better or worse.
And what motivates any individual scholar to pursue a topic is in fact at least partially curiosity. So I for one am happy that there are diverse scholarly interests and curiosities out there looking in all kinds of different directions.
(Full disclosure: I am a total nerd and a social scientist by training and profession. But I think I would feel this way even if I was not part of the academic world. Or certainly hope enough other non-academics share my position.)
- Just by way of illustration, we all are grateful for Banting and Best’s celebrated “discovery” of insulin in 1921, but see this limited timeline to follow the various stepping stones they had at their disposal: History of Insulin - Discovery to Modern Day Timeline. (And this is obviously a heavily abridged list of just some other proximate and major discoveries, whose authors all also “stood on the shoulders” of those that worked before them. As you might also know, the first documentation of diabetes cases comes to us from the ancient Egyptians. All they were able to do is describe the condition. It took centuries to get to some understanding of what causes it, let alone how to treat it.)
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Potentially some of the feeling could come from the way articles are often times intentionally sensationalized to make it sound like THE CURE is right around the corner.
Some people may have their emotional happiness based on the need to feel that THE CURE is being worked on and is about to be delivered.
Other people may find it emotionally disappointing and draining to hear years after years about THE CURE being right around the corner but never to have it materialize.
Some people are pessimists and some people are optimists.
I personally am happy with small stepping stones. In addition, I like a balance of research towards THE CURE as well as research towards managing diabetes with the assumption there is no imminent cure.
I would not want to have all my hopes and all funding focused in one direction and under one roof. I like funding and research spread around. Some will show results and some will not. Some funding will be foolishly spent and some will not. Some funding will even be illegally stolen. Some research and funding will be spent on short term projects for management and some on long term research that will not yield fruit for time to come. Some funding should be spent on immediate patient management using what is not only currently available but what is practical for that patient.
IMHO the only approach which would be foolish would be to do nothing.
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My point about the research study I cited was that I had found countless articles like that that were not even on any path to a cure. Also, the path to a cure is often profoundly superficial, in the way that aspirin was found to treat fever and headaches in the 1860s but the explanation for why it does so was not available until the 1970s. If we had tried to approach the problem from the basic research rather than from superficial observation, we would have had to wait another century before treating headaches. In the same way, President Truman ordered a war on cancer in 1950, just as Nixon did in 1972, and so now we have volumes of basic research data about cancer but only very minimal progress in curing or even treating it.
An example of a superficial cure for type 1 diabetes is the implantation of encapsulated islets in a semipermeable member which allows for the escape of insulin but not for the entrance of an immunological attack. It is really very obvious and doesn’t involve much basic research, but if we could supply sufficient oxygen to the encapsulated islets, it would be a functional cure to type 1 diabetes.
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