Dr. Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital told a diabetes conference in New Orleans this week that BCG — a 1921 vaccine made from weakened cow tuberculosis germs — appears to slow type 1 diabetes over five years.
Type 1 is the one where your immune system eats your pancreas. The fix, apparently, is a syringe of cow bacteria invented when my great-grandfather was still optimistic.
I respect this. A shot older than antibiotics is outperforming the gleaming pump on your hip. Then again, so does most of what kills me by sixty.
The mechanism is unclear. The vaccine seems to retrain the immune cells that wrecked the pancreas, nudging blood sugar markers in the right direction. Slowly. Over years. The kind of timeline drug companies hate and cows have plenty of.
Faustman wants bigger trials. I want a nap.
Based on the original article "Century-old tuberculosis vaccine could help treat diabetes, trials hint. How?".
