Not all physicians would see therapeutic implications in the fact that the insulin receptor has been structurally conserved throughout evolution. But the career of clinical and laboratory investigator Jesse Roth, MD, 44 years old and chief of the Diabetes Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases, has been based on the belief that such fundamental knowledge is necessary for understanding and treating diseases like diabetes.
This view is clear in Roth's appraisal of the important new approaches to diabetes. One involves the increasing emphasis on weight reduction and the decreasing reliance on oral hypoglycemic drugs and even insulin. The other involves studies of the insulin receptor.
"The people who started to look at diet again were the people who were upset by the results of the University Group Diabetes Program study," says Roth. "The study concerned both safety and efficacy. The safety business got most of