Insulin

In a typical middle school, two or three children have Type 1 diabetes, the form of the disease that typically strikes during puberty (but sometimes in kindergarten or even earlier), wiping out the body's ability to make insulin. Right now, there's no cure. And Type 1 is especially tough to manage because the insulin that kids need to stay alive can't be taken as a pill or a syrup. The biggest new breakthrough is an insulin pump that works in tandem with a glucose monitor using radio signals, says Dr. Steven Willi, director of the Diabetes Center for Children at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The father and son of a diabetic woman who died in November after police ignored her requests for insulin during a day in custody, yesterday sued the city, alleging that police negligence and willful misconduct led to the woman's death. The suit, filed in Common Pleas Court, doesn't seek specific damages. But lawyers for the estate of Betty Jean Davis noted that the city's legal liability limit is $500,000. Davis, 36, of West Philadelphia, was arrested Nov. 5 after her boyfriend was caught stealing a tape from a video store.

IT IS VERY unfortunate that Philadelphia has decided to reduce the number of school nurses. All children benefit from the expertise provided by the school nurse. However, for the child with diabetes, a number of other caregivers can be trained to administer insulin and to recognize and treat low blood sugar. Parents of newly diagnosed children with diabetes quickly learn to care for their child. They also train others, such as family members and babysitters, to provide care. And, of course, older children can usually administer their own insulin.

It is widely believed that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and certain other afflictions. Interestingly, no molecular, biological, causal mechanism has ever been proven, nor have causal chemicals in cigarette smoke been identified scientifically. It is also noteworthy that many smokers do not contract lung cancer, while some nonsmokers do. Rejecting rhetoric, what is the scientific explanation for this? It is true that, statistically, the lung cancer mortality rate is higher among smokers than among nonsmokers.

Four more people with diabetes have joined a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the Philadelphia Police Department, contending that, within the last year, they were denied insulin or treatment after being taken into custody. "We're concerned that this number of people with serious failures to treat have come forward after just one or two newspaper articles," said Alan L. Yatvin, a Center City civil-rights lawyer who filed the proposed class-action suit last month on behalf of Stephen Rosen and other diabetics.

In the mid-1970s, University of Pennsylvania researchers began transplanting insulin-producing cells into rats. Just last week, some 17 years after their initial tests, they announced that the procedure has proved successful in curing diabetes. But only in the rats. They still aren't ready to try it in humans. So much for medical miracles and "instant" cures. Turn to AIDS, however, and the news seems much different. Although there is no cure yet, so much medical attention - and funding - has been focused on the epidemic that in a relatively short time a large number of drugs and procedures have been devised to fight it. So while the latest diabetes news is "tremendously promising," says Juvenile Diabetes Foundation reserach director Sarah King, progress toward a cure still seems unconscionably slow to the 1 million American who must give themselves daily insulin injections.

For the first time since he was 17, Robert Mingin, 42, has been liberated from his twice-daily insulin injections, perhaps for good. Surgeons at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania said yesterday that a pancreas Mingin received from a brain-dead donor on June 24 was functioning well and producing insulin. It is the first pancreas transplant in the Philadelphia region that has shown promise of success. Surgeons said that most unsuccessful pancreas transplants fail in the first six months, and those that succeed a year usually last indefinitely.

Deputy Police Commissioner Thomas Nestel said yesterday that the department was conducting an investigation into the death of Betty Jean Davis, 36, who died Nov. 6 at Hahnemann University Hospital, three hours after her arraignment at the Police Administration Building on shoplifting charges. Davis and her boyfriend had been arrested the previous evening and were held 22 hours before the arraignment. During that time, Davis, a diabetic, reportedly asked police matrons repeatedly for insulin and cold water, to no avail.

Police matrons were negligent and should be disciplined for ignoring the insulin requests of a diabetic shoplifting suspect who died after her release from a Police Administration Building cell in November, the district attorney's office said yesterday. But DA Ronald D. Castille says he won't press criminal charges against the jailers because medical experts could not determine whether lack of insulin killed Betty Jean Davis, 36. She collapsed on the street after spending more than 22 hours in police custody.

When Dorothy Leese was a little girl in the 1940s, her parents would boil 10 drops of her urine in a pan on the stove every day. And when Dorothy's pals would come to visit, she'd tell them "we're doing a chemical experiment. " Because her body didn't produce insulin, her parents went to the local butcher in Newark, N.J., and squeezed the pancreas of a dead cow or pig to retrieve the animal's insulin. This impure substance was injected in her arms and legs, leaving ridges and dents where the animal's foreign tissue was not absorbed by her body.