Medical Cure and Progress: The Case of Type-1 Diabetes

Medicine often defines progress in terms of medical cures; however, such cures are rare. At best, medical progress generally consists of managing patients more efficiently or competently, especially in terms of relieving their symptoms. Today, medicine stands on the edge of curing a number of diseases. However, before achieving such cures, biomedical scientists need to understand in finer detail the mechanisms of physiological and pathological processes, especially from a systems perspective, and students of biomedical studies need to understand more precisely what a medical cure is conceptually or philosophically. This article utilizes type-1 diabetes to explore the issues surrounding medical progress with respect to defining medical cure, especially in terms of distinguishing it from managing a patient's illness.