INS and diabetes mellitus: As diabetes progresses, becoming more severe, more β-cells die and α-cells suffer from “hypoglycemic blindness” (perhaps partly due to increased sensitivity to exogenous insulin), becoming sluggish in response to low glucose, exacerbating life-threatening acute hypoglycemic episodes, responsible for ~5% of mortality due to diabetes (Gerich, 1988; Cryer, 2002).