Mary Tyler Moore describes a "struggle every day to achieve a balance between what I eat, what I do and how I feel."
She's had type 1 diabetes for more than 30 years. Her body makes no insulin. As a result, she's seen her blood sugar fall "dangerously low" and bounce "frighteningly high." She nearly lost a toe and has been so sick that an ambulance had to take her to the hospital. She's also had major eye surgery and, unless the lighting is very bright, she has trouble seeing well.
She calls herself one of the lucky ones. Millions of Americans who have either type 1 (formerly called juvenile diabetes) or type 2 diabetes know how hard it is to keep blood sugar under control.
And the consequences of failure include seizures, kidney failure, blindness, stroke, heart attack, amputation and death.
Moore, international chairwoman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, was the keynote speaker Friday at Sen. Orrin Hatch's 18th annual Utah Women's Conference at Abravanel Hall. She entertained hundreds of women with inside-Hollywood stories and tales from her own life, both funny and sad.
Her disease and the death of her son Richard in 1980 to a gun-cleaning accident have given her a "growing concern for the most vulnerable among us," she said. And she thinks that includes a responsibility to look for effective treatments for chronic diseases such as diabetes.
She believes that stem-cell research offers one of the greatest hopes for those with diabetes. But she fears that by limiting the number of embryonic cell lines that can be used — to existing lines only — President Bush may have cut off promising avenues of research.
Embryonic stem cells are derived from fertilized eggs that were produced as part of an in vitro procedure but were not implanted. Typically, such eggs are frozen or destroyed. The cell lines approved for federally funded research are those donated by the couples from and for whom they were produced. Moore likens it to a loving parent donating a child's organs after an accident so someone else's child can live.
"Allowing stem-cell research to move forward is the pro-life position," said Moore, who praised Hatch's stand on the issue.
No one's sure whether stem-cell research will pan out, Moore and her husband, Dr. Robert Levine, acknowledged in a press briefing after her speech. But they do know that other research has its own barriers. For instance, two years ago islet cells were transplanted into patients with type 1 diabetes as part of a clinical trial, with encouraging results. But, Moore said, the islet cells are taken from cadaver pancreases and there are fewer than 2,000 available each year. And recipients have to take toxic immunosuppressants to battle rejection.
Levine said he and Moore also support nuclear transplant technology as well, though not reproductive cloning. But embryonic stem cells "provide the first area of opportunity, and it needs to be strongly supported."
Should stem cells prove effective, they could be produced for many people, unlike treatments that rely on organ donation.
Moore said one consequence of the president's limiting federal research to existing cell lines has been that more research is taking place in other countries. "We'd like to keep at least some reasonable amount within the United States," she said.
E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com