There’s a running joke in the Type 1 diabetes community that’s been going strong for at least two decades: “Don’t worry, a cure is just five years away!” It’s become such a reliable punchline that you could set your watch by it, except the watch never actually reaches zero.

So when I saw headlines about Stanford scientists curing Type 1 diabetes in mice—quickly followed by similar news from China—my immediate reaction was somewhere between cautious optimism and weary cynicism. The comments section on one discussion thread captured this perfectly, with someone who’s lived with T1 for 48 years wryly noting they’ve been hearing about that five-year timeline their entire adult life.