Logistics of a cure

The Cure
2006 Publicity Photo

One day, there will be a cure.

I’m about 75% sure of that. (I’m about 40% sure that I got that percentage right).

But it’s not here right now, and I’m 100% sure of that. So please don’t misunderstand and please don’t be misled. There is no way to cure yourself of diabetes.  At least not that anyone knows of.

When someone does finally discover the holy grail — and I mean a finished product, not just an abstract idea — how will it take form, and how will it get deployed to the masses? That’s a challenge in and of itself. In all likeliness, this will need to be figured out even before the press-release goes out, otherwise the poor miracle-worker’s office could resemble a Walmart early in the morning following Thanksgiving.

Seriously, could you imagine what it would be like if you held the cure in your hands? What would you do with it?

Maybe you’d want to treat everyone yourself. Put a press-release out on the newswire, hire some crowd-control officers, and prepare for a Blue Friday that will put all previous Black Friday crowds to shame.

Or maybe you’d try to franchise your discovery. Recruit endocrinologists (or surgeons, or pharmacists, or sorcerers, or whatever it takes) to learn your technique and administer it, while you just teach classes and collect royalty checks. I think the guy who invented LASIK vision correction took this route.

If you are in the United States, you might need to file for, and wait for, FDA approval. Maybe you wouldn’t bother — you’d just take your technique to Geneva, Helsinki, or St. Petersburg, or anyplace that would allow you to cure a terminal illness without all the red-tape. (Note: I have no idea what the regulatory environment is really like in any of these places.)

But then you’d have to start negotiations with insurance companies. Would an insurance company cover the cost of an American client to see a doctor in a foreign country? They should. Personally, I think my insurance company could send my entire family for a week-long vacation to Switzerland, all expenses paid, cure my diabetes, and still save money in the long run. But if they didn’t, I’d probably be willing to pay out-of-pocket, and they’d save even more.

Whatever the process, everyone can’t be cured in a day. How would you choose who gets the cure first? Would it be a first-come-first-served approach? Would those who are in the most dire need get it first (there’s an incentive to not take care of yourself!)? Maybe it would be a chivalrous approach: women and children first. Or a lottery (there are plenty of ways to assign lottery numbers).

And you’ve still got to get the word out – in such a way that people will believe it and not distort it.

Seriously, anything I hear about regarding a cure is accompanied by a huge degree of skepticism. We’ve been misled in the past. We’ve been disappointed in the past. Some of us have fallen for it before, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to fall for it again.

With blogs, press-releases, and the evening news ruled out, who would PWD’s trust? I’d trust my endocrinologist if he told me of a cure, but I only see him every four months. Somebody else will most likely have gotten the news from their endo before I get it from mine, and they’d probably blog or tweet about it, and I probably wouldn’t believe it. See where this is going?

And then, if you’ve got any gas left in the tank, you can start curing people.

Even when a cure is out there, it still may prove to be just as elusive as before it was discovered.

So, my friends with diabetes, don’t get your hopes up.