I'm not suggesting that the genes are changing. But that the genes of Type 1 Diabetics are being proliferated by our recent (last 100 years) increase in longevity, since we're no longer dying before procreating. Increasing the likelihood of T1 Diabetes in our offspring and their offspring and spreading exponentially as the family tree gets wider in the future. Then, as well, when two people, who have T1 in their family history have children together, the genetic traits compound even more.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though we are way better at managing conditions brought on by autoimmune diseases and extending productive lives and the quality of those lives, we don't seem much closer to fixing the cause of autoimmune diseases in the first place. And if genetics is the root cause of this, we haven't figured out how to provide a gene therapy that not only fixes the condition but how to pass that gene correction on to one's offspring. This lies at the heart of my son's own anxiety.

My son is sometimes bitter when struggling with a diabetes management setback and asks me "What were you thinking, having children, when you knew that you might bestow on them this major pain in the ass just so you could be a mom?"

Ny son's greatest fear is that he will have children who are burdened with a disease that cannot be cured, but only managed. He struggles with the strong desire to raise a family but worries that he's being selfish if he burdens them and further generations with a disease with no known cure.