Finding a cure for diabetes would be one of those world-changing discoveries, but for the moment it still eludes us. There are two types of diabetes, the imaginatively named Type 1 and Type 2 that are similar but different and both are considered incurable. Whereas the more common Type 2 is caused by insulin resistance due to lifestyle and genetic factors, Type 1 is actually an autoimmune disease that often develops in childhood. It all starts when the immune system begins attacking the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Once these have all been destroyed, the person is left unable to manage their blood glucose and will have to inject insulin for the rest of their life. It can lead to all kinds of horrible stuff such as heart disease and stroke, kidney disease, blindness, nerve disease and amputation. Despite the fact that we have been "on the verge of a cure" for a couple of decades now, it has so far remained elusive. There is a beacon of new hope at the moment in the form of gene therapy that could be used to actually rewrite the genes that cause the disease in the first place.
