This could be huge. I’d like to see it replicated as soon as possible. Some researchers may have come up with a cure for diabetes. And it’s an unconventional one, out of left field:

Dr. Dosch had concluded in a 1999 paper that there were surprising similarities between diabetes and multiple sclerosis, a central nervous system disease. His interest was also piqued by the presence around the insulin-producing islets of an “enormous” number of nerves, pain neurons primarily used to signal the brain that tissue has been damaged.

Suspecting a link between the nerves and diabetes, he and Dr. Salter used an old experimental trick — injecting capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot chili peppers, to kill the pancreatic sensory nerves in mice that had an equivalent of Type 1 diabetes.

“Then we had the biggest shock of our lives,” Dr. Dosch said. Almost immediately, the islets began producing insulin normally “It was a shock ? really out of left field, because nothing in the literature was saying anything about this.”

The only problem I see is that this is worse than stem cells from a human sacrifice standpoint. How many people will a small band like the Hot Chili Peppers be able to cure? Just how much capsaicin can they produce, and how fast?