A cure for diabetes and awful jokes

Those with Type 1 diabetes previously known as juvenile onset diabetes, because it usually occurs in childhood produce no insulin and are dependent on daily insulin injections and blood tests. Meltons brilliant team has developed stem cells that can be reprogrammed to produce insulin, obviating the need for injections, and in the longer term helping to avoid common complications such as strokes, kidney disease and blindness, as well as hypos, which can result in coma or death.

On a lighter note, if the success is reproduced in human trials, it will also presumably save me from having to listen to my husbands appalling jokes (a sure sign of low blood sugar is the fact that he finds what he is saying absolutely hilarious), and that theres no chance of us ruining yet another major social occasion.

The most embarrassing one was when the paramedics coming to treat him managed to set off several car alarms hours after my best friends wedding, more or less under the happy couples window.

It will also mean that I wont have physically to sit on top of him to stop him hurting himself while thrashing around semi-conscious at 6ft 3in to my 5ft 5in, thats no easy task. Although, on the downside, it means that I wont make friends with the local team of paramedics. My husband once regained consciousness to hear one ask me, Now, it was America you were about to go to last time we came here to help, wasnt it?

Politicians and health workers have become fixated on Type 2 diabetes, because of its shocking rise; there are now nearly three million people in the country with Type 2, which is often triggered through obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choices, as opposed to Type 1, where a patients own immune system turns on itself and destroys pancreatic cells. Diabetes is the fastest-growing health threat of our time accounting for 10 per cent of the NHS budget, while 1 million is spent every hour on diabetes.

Meanwhile, too many children and young people struggle on, trying to manage growing up with a chronic illness that affects their life both dramatically but also in mundane ways never being able to be without blood tests or insulin, trying to juggle sensible eating and drinking while all their friends do what they like with no adverse consequences.

And if they do mess up as all those with diabetes do theres often a lack of understanding and sympathy. Back in 2005, police Tasered a man in a bus depot in Leeds who was having a hypo. In the US, a woman was handcuffed and thrown into a police van after police mistook her hypo for drunkenness.

So think for a moment this week about those around you behaving irrationally, stupidly, disconcertingly. They may just need a bit of understanding and some sugar quickly.

Especially if they are telling awful jokes with their pants on their head.

Gorgeous George is a vote-winner

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A cure for diabetes and awful jokes