There are two types of diabetes. The most common one, Type II, is derived from our own choices: poor diet, no exercise, and an overall unhealthy lifestyle. This is fueled by poor genetics, and makes up about 90% of all cases of diabetes. 

    But there is another form of diabetes that is far more restricting and far more deadly. Type I, or Juvenile diabetes, is a genetic, and sometimes viral, disease that has absolutely nothing to do with the lifestyle a person chooses to live. It strikes children, adolescents, and young adults normally under the age of 30 suddenly, stemming from a "dead" pancreas. What happens is the body's own immune system automatically develops antibodies that direct disease-fighting white blood cells to kill the crucial insulin-generating cells of the pancreas as if they were an infection. Most of the time, this is genetic, but it can also be caused by viruses that are killed by the same antibody, and the pancreas dies as a casualty.

    Life for a person with Type I diabetes is harsh and very restricted. Completely dependent on medical supply, a juvenile diabetic must inject themselves periodically with insulin usually several times a day. Until about a few years ago, these diabetics were forced to carry multiple needles with them wherever they went. Recently, however, renowned inventor Dean Kamen (the guy who invented the Segway) created an insulin pump that is connected by a tube and needle directly into the pancreas that a diabetic can carry around like a cell phone or a pager. This greatly reduced the stress of living with Type I diabetes, but even so, the progress on finding a cure has come no closer to its goal.

    Only a few weeks ago, however, the science magazine Nature Biotechnology published a report of a group of scientists who, with the help of stem cell research, successfully bred a group of primitive cells that reversed chemically-induced Type I diabetes in mice, with only a very small number of the mice producing tumors, as was expected.

    Although it is still a stretch away from finding a full cure, progress is progress, and in medicine sometimes it's the small things that can help doctors take that one giant leap forward that can change the lives of thousands.

    Politicians talk about how immoral it is to harness stem cell research. They say that a stem cell has as much feeling as a human being, and that for each life we save, we are in fact killing another.

    But it's simply not true. Scientists studying stem cell research have tried time and again to proclaim how stem cell research saves more than it kills, if it kills at all. But most of these straight-laced politicians would rather stick to their guns and try to seem like the tough guys they are than listen to a bunch of geeky scientists go on about how God doesn't exist. And for that I don't blame them.

    But when an eight-year old girl walks up to President Bush begging him to support stem-cell research so that doctors can find a cure for her diabetes, and he turns her away in the name of his own misinformed morals, it's time to realize that enough is enough, and go forward with research in the name of saving lives instead.

    If you want to read the entire article on the new breakthrough in diabetes, you can visit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International's website, or click here.