Diabetes and legislation

Generally, it can be demonstrated that knowledge and pictures about diabetes are badly understood and badly viewed. There are several reasons for this, like the lack of information for the public, the lack of information about the disease and new technologies lead to new treatments, confusion between the 2 types of diabetes... That is why employers are scared to recruit diabetics and why relationships are sometimes not easy. They often think that a diabetic patient always has a lot of problems due to the disease and so he can't be efficient at work. Or this is totally wrong, as a patient who is taking care of himself correctly can be like any other person.

In the legislation, diabetics have some restrictions or more exams to pass to get different things like a driving license:
. To work in public functions, a diabetic must have the approval of the Comité Médical in France. Moreover, he can be fired if the Comité Médical declares that he or she is no longer able to do their work correclty. Even if it is a serious organization, the choice can be subjective, due to a bias about diabetics.
. Some jobs and sports are forbidden, like scuba-diving or truck driver, bus driver... Some schools too, like the ENPC (Ecole National des Ponts et Chaussées). To sum up, all the military schools and army jobs plus some engineering schools and public functions, and sport where the total master of oneself is mandated.
. They have to mention their diabetes when they pass their driving license, which has a maximum validity of 5 years (it can be just 6 months).

There are a lot of other details in the legislation where diabetes is mentionned, and this is why a lot of associations are fighting to make the life of diabetics better.

Diabete and Stem Cells Therapy

A Stem cell is a cell which has the possibilty to reproduce itself and to develop into specific ones present in all the organs in the human body, through cell division. Each cell of the human body is differentiated, they have a specific function. However, stem cells are undifferentiated. They can generate various specialized cell types and then they can be used to repair damaged organs and tissues. Due to this, stem cells are nowadays considered as an anwser to incurable diseases like Leukemia or Parkinson's disease, and Diabetes too!! They are the object of a lot of research.

According to the Times, in an article dated 11 April 2007 "Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again." The experiment has been done on "15 patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes", an important point here because it seems that it doesn't work with old ones. However, only two of them have been able to live without insulin for 3 years since the therapy, while the others keep needing some injections, but just once a week and in small quantities.

The treatment is quite simple. Doctors have isolated stem cells from the blood of patients, who then "underwent a mild form of chemotherapy to eliminate the white blood cells causing damage to the pancreas". Afterwards, "they were given transfusions of their own stem cells to help rebuild their immune systems".

Eventhough this is a simple operation, it is not yet applicable to all patients, because of the randomness of stem cell differenciation, which can degenerate into tumor cells. Moreover, the patient has to have been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for less than 6 weeks, otherwise it is inefficient.