I never knew the pump has been around for as many years as it has been. A friend of ours who was diagnosed at age 6, now in his md 40’s, was one of the first 10 people to get the pump. He was 12 years old at the time. They were much bigger then and they plugged into the wall.
So, this is all they came up with? Millions and millions of dollars in research? I know they come along way with meters and stuff like that, but to me that’s not part of research. This just makes me upset!
the first one I ever saw was a "motorized syringe" about 1979. big as a brick. scared the heck out of me.
the development of medical products like syringes, pens, and pumps has nothing to do with biological research, even though both a pump and the insulin inside it have to do with diabetes - the research, testing, manufactuing, funding, regulations, (etc.) come from and are driven by completely different areas of public and private research.
I have worked for both, a well known medical equipment company and for the last 15 yease for a pharma. Even for pharma's that have medical equipment divisions (J&J for example) it's still run like separate company. heck, their division even compete against one another.
anyway, i agree, it's been a long time. don't give up hope, but for me I feel better if I do the best I can with the crap I have - the actual cure might be a long way off. =)
i support both research for a cure and research to make the day to day living easier/more manageable. a cure is many, many years off so i tend to focus on 'what can someone do for me now to make my life with diabetes simpler'. just in the 12 years i've been using a pump, i feel like they can improved in leaps and bounds. when i first got a pump, all it did was deliver insulin. no bells and whistles. now there are pumps with remotes, pumps you can turn off, temporary basal rates, multiple ICRs and ISFs, automatic bolus calculators, and even ways to personalize the alarms to sound like a song you enjoy. i'm please with how pumps are improving. every 4 years when i'm up for a renewal, i like to see what's out there and what i want to try next. they are becoming more sleek looking, too. if i'm going to wear something 24 hours a day, might as well make it pretty :O)
Well, it seems like they are getting closer. Here are a couple of articles that are interesting...
This one talks about reversing diabetes with more stem-cell experiments: www.vancouversun.com/.../story.html
This is one of a potential cure by ridding the body of the glucagon hormone: www.sciencedaily.com/.../110126161835.htm
This guy blogs about his diabetes technology finds: www.bernardfarrell.com/.../blogger.html
And somewhere on the dLife website (but I can't find the exact article now), they talked about an insulin inhaler & some sort of watch.
I haven't been on this site in quite some time, and I had to laugh when I saw this post because I just had this exact conversation with my husband this morning. I was being generally cranky because the infusion site for my pump was hurting a little and the adhesive was itching (which is a common problem for me). I just looked at him and said "why haven't they figured out how to implant islet cells or something yet??? It's been so long!!".