Posted by BASIA LEPIK on December 09, 1997 at 19:21:57:
In Reply to: JDF/NASA Workshop posted by Al Gordon on December 09, 1997 at 07:54:11:
This report was very helpful in letting me understand much of what is going on in diabetes research. I wish there were more specifics and names though. I am a researcher in polymer chemistry for industrial applications and also have type one diabetes for nineteen years. There is obviously still development work to be done on islet xenotransplantation but it seems to be the closest. You can find faults forever with something but the question is - is there anything that is clearly better than islet xenotransplantation? Is there anything that has fewer problems to solve? If we think the answers to these questions are both no then we know where to put our resources. I worked on a problem for the last four years that was very difficult to solve even though we were getting closer. When the decision was made to gamble and go with one of the approaches you should have heard the howling in the lab as chemists and engineers had their pet projects put on hold. Geuss what happened. We now have solved the problems and have sold $22 million worth of the polymer in the first six months. You know what they say around here "Fire the chemist, ship the product". Developers never want the process to end.
I was surprised to see the suggestions at the end of the report because I cannot imagine that JDF could do things differently than this. But I read Countdown and visited a few JDF events and I think I understand why we arent going anywhere.