This little piggy

Isn't going to the market - he or she may be pushing to cure diabetes. So they say in the news.

Pigs may hold the key to curing juvenile diabetes, and the Emory Transplant Center (at the Emory Univ. Hospital in Atlanta, GA) just received $2.5 million to unlock the puzzle. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is funding the center's efforts to study whether implanting parts of a pig's pancreas into a human diabetes patient can help find a cure.

Last month, the BBC reported that a U.S. team has reversed diabetes in monkeys by transplanting the islets from pig pancreases, according to a study in Nature Medicine. The University of Minnesota hopes to start trials in humans by 2009.

So, that leaves me with the question: does that result in more, or less, pigs to roast? Either way, at least the pigs are doing something good with themselves and benefiting us humans. Hope we can someday return the favor. (Here's my disclaimer: Apologies to all animal lovers and PETA-types...No offense.)

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