Introduction: 

My basic research question is “why haven’t we found a cure to diabetes?” We managed to find a vaccine for the corona virus within a year but we still can’t even get close to finding a way to prevent people from becoming diabetics and or find a cure to diabetes. I am interested in this question because both my parents are diabetics along with 10.5% of the population of the U.S. alone. I want to help in any way possible to help make a cure for diabetes, because diabetes is one of the major causes of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, and strokes. While researching this topic I expect to find information about how one becomes a diabetic and how it affects their bodies. I also expect to find some reasons why there isn’t a cure available for this condition. If I happen to find information that I wasn’t expecting at all. I will not throw it all away, I will learn as much as I can from the information and try to make sense of it.

Source Analysis:

Source #1: “ Diabetes: Will It Ever Be Cured?” By: Terri D’Arrigo, September 2014. https://endocrinenews.endocrine.org/sept-2014-diabetes-will-it-ever-be-cured/

Summary: 

In this article Terri D’Arrigo talks about hypotheses scientists have come up with that they will be able to pursue and not only cure diabetes, but ultimately prevent it in the future generations to come. Immunology and beta cell function have long been the core areas of research when it comes to the cure for diabetes. Recently, scientists have made discoveries that lead to genetic therapies to help the body’s own cells fight and in some cases even get rid of itself from the disease. Researchers have also found evidence that beta cells, if not burned out , could prevent or cure type 2 diabetes.

Key Quotes: 

  • “Accili’s team conducted similar experiments in human intestinal cells derived from stem cells. Within seven days of FOXO1 deactivation, the cells began to produce insulin in response to glucose.”
  • “Which researchers found that the pancreases of 66% of participants were still producing small amounts of insulin even after 50 years of diabetes.”
  • “King says that this research could be just as important for type 2 as type 1. “Even if we can’t get rid of the insulin resistance in type 2, we might be able to generate enough beta cells to overcome the insulin resistance and get rid of diabetes,” he says.”

Rhetorical Analysis:

The overall Purpose of this article is to inform the readers what was being used in the past when looking for a cure to diabete. And what scientists are working with now. In the article Terri D’Arrigo starts off by explaining what was being researched in the past to find a cure or medicine that will help with diabetes. Then she moves along to explain the current discoveries and their outcomes. She explains how even if one of the researches that are being done are successful, we will be able to prevent or even cure type 2 diabetes. The information given in the article is to help its readers understand the research that was being done in the past and the research being done now along with the upcoming ideas. The author uses emotions and facts to appeal to its readers and make them what to keep reading, help and learn more about this never ending disease.

 

Source #2: “The Future of Diabetes Treatment: Is a Cure Possible?” By: Clara Rodriguez Fernandez, July 7, 2019.

https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/diabetes-treatment-cure-review/

Summary:

In this article Clara Rodriguez Fernandez starts off by talking about what diabetes is and how it is affecting the ones living with it, then the article moves along to talk about type 1 diabetes and some of the treatments being researched for it. Like “Replacing missing cells with cell therapy”, which is one of the biggest hopes towards developing a cure for diabetes, especially for type 1 diabetes. As Fernandez goes on in the article, she talks about all the different research projects different countries are doing in order to find a cure for diabetes. There’s also some very interesting research being done for type 2 diabetes like, “The French company Poxel is going after a different approach with a drug that simultaneously targets the pancreas, the liver and the muscles to reduce blood sugar.”  Fernandez also talks about the future of diabetes treatment. Some companies are looking for a needle free way of testing blood sugar, like in London the GlucoSense came out and uses laser light to measure sugar levels in the blood. Researchers are also speculating about microchips that can diagnose type 1 diabetes before the symptoms start to appear.

 

Key Quotes:

  • “Diabetes affects the regulation of insulin, a hormone required for glucose uptake in cells, resulting in high levels of blood sugar.”
  • “The Belgian company Orgenesis is pursuing an approach where cells from the patient’s liver are transformed into insulin-producing cells to avoid the issues of sourcing cells from donors.”
  • “In France, the company Neovacs is developing a vaccine for type 1 diabetes that stimulates the immune system to lower the levels of an inflammatory protein that is thought to be involved in multiple autoimmune diseases.”
  • “Researchers are already speculating about microchips that can diagnose diabetes type 1 before the symptoms appear or nanorobots traveling in the bloodstream while they measure glucose and deliver insulin.”

Rhetorical Analysis:

Overall the Purpose of this article is to explain what diabetes is and how it affects the body. This article explains to the readers what diabetes does to the body and what researchers are working to help cure or limit the number of people affected by this disease. The article also informs the readers of what to expect in the near future with diabetes. What kind of treatments are coming to the market and also the new technology that will improve the way of life for people already suffering from this disease. The main goal of the information provided is to help people with diabetes and their loved ones to understand the diseases and the toll it takes on the body. This article is mostly using facts to appeal to its readers and draw them in to learn more about diabetes.

Source #3:  “Is a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes on the horizon?” By: Paul Laikind, July, 2018. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_laikind_is_a_functional_cure_for_type_1_diabetes_on_the_horizon

Summary:

In this video, Paul Laikind talks about Type 1 diabetes and how it leads to the loss of beta cells in the pancreas. These beta cells are part of a cellular complex that help produce insulin, which is an essential hormone that regulates blood sugar. This cell needs to be kept within a narrow range to allow the body to normal bodily functions. Then Laikind goes on to talk about what diabetes was like 100 years ago, what life expectancy was back then for diabetic patients. He also talks about how we came to use insulin for Type 1 diabetes. In 1921, a Canadian scientist by the name of Dr. Frederick Banting and his student Charles Best isolated insulin from the pancreas of dogs to show that insulin can help control blood sugar levels. For his discoveries, Dr. Banting won the Nobel prize. This also led everyone to use insulin in humans to help with Type 1 diabetes, which led Type 1 diabetes to become a chronic disease from a fatal disease. Laikind then talks about a company via site, whose main mission is to deliver a cure for Type 1 diabetes using a pioneering regenerative medicine approach.  They plan to cure type 1 diabetes by replacing beta cells which help produce insulin. A Canadian doctor by the name of Dr. James Shapiro showed the world that by using cadaver islet transplants we can cure Type 1 diabetes. Patients that have been treated with this transplant can go 5 years without any help producing insulin. However this treatment has its limitations, there is a shortage of cells that have to come from cadaver pancreas. In the U.S. there are “only about 1,500 pancreas suitable for transplant each year.” These patients also have to continuously take immunosuppressants which is very costly. Which is why only about 2,000 patients have been treated with this transplant over the last 20 years. Laikind also talks about the Encaptra Cell Delivery Device, which will trap the cells within and allow insulin and other protein hormones to be ejected into the bloodstream with the body rejecting them.

Key Quotes:

  • “Type 1 diabetes hits basically without warning young and old and once it’s established it’s a lifelong disease.”
  • “This changed Type 1 diabetes from a fatal disease to a chronic disease.”
  • “A hundred years later we really haven’t changed the way we treat this disease, we’re still basically doing the same thing.”

Rhetorical Analysis:

The overall purpose of this Ted Talk was to inform the audience what is being done to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes and what we have so far. The aim for this is to inform really anyone, but mostly it is for the people who suffer from Type 1 diabetes and or people whose loved ones do. This speech appeals to its listeners’ emotions by using facts and evidence to support the material of the speech which is to let us see the research being done for Type 1 diabetes.

Reflection/Conclusion: 

Since I began doing research about why we haven’t found a cure to diabetes, I have not found much evidence to convince me or anyone else that we are actually trying to find a cure. Our methods of treating diabetes haven’t changed for about 100 years. We keep improving the same things over and over again, for example, we improve ways of testing our blood sugar and ways to keep track of our blood sugar but we haven’t been able to even get close enough to where diabetic patients can live a normal life. Which doesn’t surprise me at all, because if we wanted to find a cure, we would have done it ages ago. We were able to find a vaccine for COVID-19 which is basically a cure for it within a year. Which just proves the fact that if our governments or whoever is in charge of all this wants to find a cure for diabetes, it will just take a matter of years if not months until we have found a cure. If we look back to all my sources, we can see they all talk about the same things and their research is just about exactly the same. Of Course there are some differences but the overall research leads to the same answers, that we have chances to cure diabetes if we find a way to replace the lost beta cells. And they all end up getting stuck on the fact that they don’t have enough cadavers or they don’t have the technology for that yet. However I think the government is the reason there isn’t a cure for diabetes along with countless other diseases, because this one of the biggest ways the government makes money and they can’t afford to let go of free money.