Diabetes Mellitus

There are two types of diabetes. Type one is called Juvenille Diabetes, which is a kind of autoimmune disease. The cause of this type of diabetes is that the body identifies cells that produce insulin as non-self and eliminates them. As a result, the pancreas isn't able to produce insulin, so the blood sugar level becomes high. Type two is called adult-onset diabetes. In this type, pancreas still makes insulin but in small amount or other tissues are resistant to it. There is another type of diabetes, which occurs specifically during pregnancy. It is called Gestational Diabetes. It's a type of temporary diabetes that causes macrosomia.

The origin of diabetes can be human body's reaction to the ice age. The ice age happened in an extremely short amount of time. In order to survive, human body made its own adaptation. The human body would unload water (urinate) and raise blood sugar concentration in order to lower the freezing point of blood. People with that adaptation would be more likely to survive during the ice age. Also, people from northern areas are more likely to have this trait, which further proves that this trait is to adapt to the cold weather. However, this adaptation causes diabetes in our environment today, which means that a new round of evolution is taking place. Those who are less likely to have diabetes will have more chance to pass on their genes. Therefore, those who have the "diabetes trait" will eventually die out. However, if the earth enters another ice age. These "diabetes genes" will revive.

In the article, the author mentions a kind of frog that can completely freeze itself when winter comes and be thawed when it is warm. It basically adopts the same method that human survive ice age. It unloads excess water and squeeze the rest into its abdomen, so that when the water freezes, it won't crystalize and puncture blood cells, capillaries and other tissues. Its liver would release extreme amount of glucose into its blood and raise the blood sugar level, so to lower blood freezing point, also to prevent crystalized water from puncturing body tissues. It also releases Fibrinogen, a clotting factor that repairs ice-damages tissues, just in case. From this, scientists saw hope for cryopreservation and even full human body freezing.

Cryopreservation for human tissues can be extremely helpful in organ transplantation because when organs are not frozen, they have to be transplanted within days or even hours. A lot of patients died because they cannot receive donated organ in time or the donated organs can't wait for the operation preparation. If organs can be frozen and thawed, these problems won't exist. I did some research online and find out that cryopreservation is still limited to single cell preservation, for example, stem cell and embryos. The technology to freeze complete organs is still inadequate. The reason is because organs usually contain large amount of water. When water crystalizes, it will damage the tissues. Studies have been done to find out why. Scientists found out that when water within tissues crystalizes, it can enter cells' gap junction freely and cut the seams that hold the two cells' cytoplasms together. As a result, the tissue will be damaged. If the scientists can find a way to direct crystals to not go between cells, organ cryopreservation will be possible (Loren Grush).

Although I think organ cryopreservation is a good idea, I think a full body cryopreservation (cryonic) is freaky. People with incurable diseases want to preserve their body in liquid nitrogen, so that one day when there is advanced medical technology, they can be thawed and revived. 

According to my research, cryonic can only be carried out after legal death, which means heart beat and blood circulation has to completely stop, or else it will be regarded as murder or assisted suicide. After legal death, preparations for cryonic will be completed with the help of technology similar with cardiopulmonary resuscitation. However, this causes problems because during this process, the brain will have to spend a few minutes without oxygen, which can cause brain damage. 

In order to prevent water crystals from damaging body tissues, cryonicprotectant solution will be injected and circulate the body to replace water within body tissues. However, the toxicity of the solution is still not fully evaluated. Furthermore, even if these people are successfully revived, all of the people they know will probably be dead. their properties might have been moved under somebody else's name because they were considered legally dead. As a result, the cryonic technology is still extremely controversial.

Work Cited List

Grush, Loren. "Closer to cryopreservation: New findings could overcome obstacles to freezing human tissues." Nov. 05, 2013. FoxNews.com. Web.

Lemler J, Harris SB, Platt C, Huffman TM (2004). Alcor Presentation at Cambridge University. Alcor Life Extension Foundation.