It’s not every day that a documentary comes out and is showing something that has been years in the making. But that could also just be because certain stories never get documented on video.

Well, The Human Trial is pulling the curtain back on a treatment that has been many years in the making.

More than a decade in the making, THE HUMAN TRIAL follows a groundbreaking clinical trial that peels back the headlines to show the sweat, passion, and sacrifice behind every breakthrough cure. In 2011, Lisa Hepner and her husband Guy Mossman heard about a radical stem cell treatment for diabetes, a disease that shockingly kills more than five million people each year. Driven by a desire to cure Lisa of her own type 1 diabetes (T1D), the filmmakers were given unprecedented, real-time access to a clinical trial – only the sixth-ever embryonic stem cell trial in the world. What follows is an intimate journey with the patients and scientists who put themselves on the line to be first.

The Human Trial Review

This documentary, from the outside, looks like any normal documentary. But The Human Trial shows something that has never been documented before.

The film says that the cure for Type 1 Diabetes is always “5 Years Away.” And that is, in this case, actually true. But the biotech company featured in the film, Viacyte, wants to change that. They have been trying to find a way to use stem cells to cure the disease.

Now they show the actual device as well. And inside of the device, it has the stem cells in it. As for the device itself, it will act as a bio-artificial pancreas. Now, for trials like this, it usually takes a while to make sure the drug is going to be safe. And the documentary makes a point to mention that.

As for the actual trials themselves, we do get to see two different patients getting involved with the stem cell testing. Both Maren and Greg got their trials done at the University Of Minnesota’s Medical Center. And for Maren, the stem cells started working for her within three weeks of implantation.

But there is another side to a trial like this, and that is funding. The team at Viacyte went all around the world to get more funding for their experimental drug. Then there is also removing the plants from the patient and testing them to see if they are working normally.

But all in all, this documentary shows what it’s like living with a disease like this, and the hard work that goes into making a cure.

One moment that did surprise me the most was watching Maren’s journey during the whole trial. She was the first person to do the trial, and it did seem like the cells were working for her. But when she found out the cells were not working, I was very shocked. And I was mostly shocked because she was the only one who had cells that were not working right. That is the case for most drug trials. They sometimes work, and other times they just don’t work for one reason or another.

Learn more about The Human Trial here.