Hello,
This is my first post on this thread, and I thought I'd make my first post about something personal to me, and just throw a around a few ideas. I am aiming to go into Immunology when I complete school, and this is what I would like to do research in. I've had diabetes for almost twenty years, I was born with it, and during the years I was coherent I have noticed a troubling trend.
Possible 'cures' show up and disappear like wildfire.
Many of these cures that show up target the beta cells, and how to replace them. While this would be a logical solution, Type 1 Diabetes is an Auto-Immune disease, meaning the body attacked these cells originally and destroyed them. If we learned how to replace these cells it would be great, we will need to anyway, but constantly replacing them seems expensive for the patient.
So my question is, is why over the years we have wasted our time trying to replace these cells when the problem is the immune system?
I fully understand that it will take a lot of work to rework the immune system to not attack itself, but would it not help other diseases to look more into this than the replacement of the beta cells?
Maybe I'm wrong, if you have other ideas I'd love to read about them and learn. I want to learn more about Immunology and the human body so please post your ideas. As someone living with it I tend to get very frustrated with seeing possible cures when it seems like what they should be working towards is somewhat ignored, so my vision gets clouded.
And yes, I know it would take a huge amount of time to do this, and money, but I rather that than having my hopes brought up and down constantly.
