If my audience would tolerate it, I could write almost every day about a new breakthrough using stem cell from sources other human embryos. But these latest results are so exciting I had to briefly share the results with you.

Diabetes is a nasty disease, the incidence of which is growing and growing. Writing in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a research team from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and Northwestern University in Chicago has used injections of patients' own stem cells which resulted in patients left "treatment-free -- no insulin, no immune suppression for almost five years," according to Dr. Richard Burt, one of the co-authors from Northwestern University.

Beta cells produce insulin which break down the glucose in the food we eat. In type I diabetes, the patient's own immune system turns on the beta cells.

The study is a follow up to a 2007 study where 15 type 1 diabetes patients received their own stem cells "and no longer needed insulin to control their blood sugar levels," according to TIME magazine. Not only did the new study find the same success in eight more patients, it "also confirmed that in the majority of them, the stem cell transplant led to an appreciable repopulation of functioning insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas."

To simplify a complicated study, researchers believe that what triggers the attack in type I diabetes lies somewhere within the immune cells. So, as with some forms of cancer, "one possible treatment for the disease may be to wipe out the entire existing immune system and replace it with a fresh one, derived from stem cells without this destructive trait," according to TIME's Alice Park. That's what Voltarelli's team did with remarkable success.

"Twelve were able to stay off insulin therapy for three years, and eight needed only intermittent help from insulin treatments during the five-year study period," she writes." On average, the patients remained free of insulin injections for 31 months." Park described this as "a milestone in diabetes treatment."

"I wouldn't use the word cure," Dr. Burt said. "But it appears we changed the natural history of the disease."

Part One