I awakened to find my ISP engaging in their apparently contractually-obligated incompetence provisioning, whereby my access to their DNS is provided only on a sporadic basis, unaccompanied by any form of notification or explanation to customers.

Naturally, my primary desktop machine chose this as the optimum time to experience repeated hard crashes necessitating a day’s worth of diagnostic activity. Viv and I had a 1pm appointment at the diabetes clinic so I set the disk utilities to start a-grindin’ and headed off.

I mention this mostly so that I can link to an article that appeared in the New Yorker, in the February 10 issue, “The Edmonton Protocol”, by Jerome Groopman, a layperson-oriented overview of what appears to be, in fact, the cure for insulin-dependent diabetes.

The catch? Well, insofar as the cure is concerned, it’s wholly dependent on a specific cell type, islets, which diabetics no longer produce and which the rest of us produce in small quantities. It’s a transplantation procedure. Which means that donors are required. But don’t rush out to make an appointment – you gots to be dead.

So in essence, the cure is here, but only a small, small percentage of insulin-dependent diabetics can ever be granted it.

Remember the ban on fetal cell culture harvesting from back in pre-9/11 days? The article, ever so non-confrontationally, points out that that policy has more or less kept experimentation from progressing insofar as human cell cultures are concerned. Astute observers will have no difficulty guessing my emotional state as I added this particular equation up.

I’ve been aware of the protocol since just prior to the inauguration of large-scale trials (10 people participated in them at Viv’s care provider, and I discussed with her the possibility of participation, something we decided against before ever contacting someone there), I was happy to see a long, clear exploration of the procedure and status of the trials today.

Sadly, this site notes (page search for “Edmonton Protocol”) that the article is under embargo from reprinting until April 4, and the New Yorker website does not apparently have a copy of it hidden away someplace.

However, a Google search reveals someone had it up at one time – it’s since been removed. Close examination of the Google search results may reward the determined, although discretion is advised.