Worse
yet! I was dismayed by the late Mr. Beale's
information below. Now, in 2002, the ADA reports the Age
Adjusted Diabetes Mortality Rate is up 40% from the
CDC's 1987 report. This simply proves that all of our
research and miraculous improvements in diabetes care
are a total waste and all of the hundreds of millions
spent in our names are being totally misspent by
Diabusiness which profits from our suffering and loss.
We Diabetics must regain control of
our futures and lives!
The following is fairly typical of Email
communications I read these days:
-----Original
Message-----
From:Bruce Beale
Sent:27 January 2000 10:51
To:Dave Groves
Subject:age-adjusted death rate
“Since 1980, the age-adjusted death
rate due to diabetes has increased by 30 percent. it stands
to reason that far more of our health-care dollars should be
allocated to cure this disease.”
Over the past 80 years a fortune has
been spent on “cure”, yet surely this fact should mean
that more time and effort should be devoted to treatment. In
a relatively short period enormous strides have been made in
treating HIV/AIDS yet care and treatment of diabetes lags
behind and is clearly becoming worse.
Bruce
"Since
1980, the age-adjusted death rate due to diabetes has
increased by 30 percent. Five of the nation’s leading
health organizations recently joined to issue a public
health statement declaring diabetes to be a major risk
factor for cardiovascular disease.
Diabetes is
also an expensive disease, with more than one out of every
10 United States health-care dollars spent on its treatment.
Focused
efforts to cure diabetes are urgently needed. The Diabetes
Research Working Group, a blue-ribbon panel of experts
established by Congress, has called for raising the National
Institutes of Health’s budget for diabetes research to
$827 million next year and $1.6 billion by 2004. In
comparison, the N.I.H. will spend only $443 million in
fiscal year 1999 on diabetes research, according to the
research working group.
The N.I.H.
maintains that funding for diabetes is commensurate with the
burden of the disease. However, since diabetes is one of the
nation’s most expensive diseases and it’s on the
increase, it stands to reason that far more of our
health-care dollars should be allocated to cure this
disease.
NICOLAS N.
ABOURIZK, M.D.
Hartford
The writer is
chief, section of endocrinology and diabetes, at Saint
Francis Hospital and Medical Center and is also professor of
clinical medicine at the University of Connecticut School of
Medicine."
-----Original Message-----
From:Jenny Hirst
Sent:Thursday, January 27, 2000 5:.86 AM
To:Bruce Beale; Dave Groves
Subject:RE: age-adjusted death rate
Some common sense thinking, at last!
However I think they also need to look much more closely at
what research they fund both in terms of subject matter and
quality! It may be that if they got rid of some of the
rubbish that is funded they need not spend more! It is
quality and correctly directed research that is necessary.
Is it not amazing that for all the
hundreds of millions of dollars contributed to the US ADA
“for cure” that almost nothing they spend in the tiny
bit they spend on research goes to cure work?
Is it not amazing that for the $200mm
plus spent on DCCT so far, the only result has been an
enormous and unacceptable increase in hypoglycemia mortality
with no benefit to life expectancy or life quality for the
diabetic?
Is it not amazing that with the
enormously costly (to diabetics and the world economy) “advances”
in medical science since the ‘70s, including the advent of
home glucose monitoring, the invention of the glycosylated
hemoglobin tests, the “perfection” of synthetic human
insulin and the so-called “analogs,” the improvements in
heart disease and stroke treatment, the improvements in
kidney and pancreatic transplant medicine, the improvements
in retinal surgery, the addition of ACE inhibitors and diet
revisions for diabetes care to prevent nephropathy and the
improvements in diabetes care which reportedly give diabetic
women a good chance to have near-normal pregnancies, that is
spite of all of this, US Type 1 diabetics have a 17%
mortality within the first 25 years from diagnosis where
other countries show only a 5% mortality; that our age
adjusted mortality has grown astronomically in the face of
all these “wonderful” improvements?
Is it not amazing that from what Joan
Hoover and I can recall, he US Congress vowed to fund NIH
research to cure diabetes within 15 years 30 years ago and
gave us, instead, such poor science as the DCCT, 54 page 2
day planning sessions that never mention the word cure?
Clearly global “diabusiness” is
responsible for this and clearly as seen in the FOX 13
reports, the US ADA is their chief handmaiden.The US Congress must be put on notice
that ADA represents ONLY the drug industry and has abandoned
its charter, mission statement and the diabetics of the
world.
I feel guilty for having been diabetic
for 46 years and having stood silent as things got this bad.However, the fact
that Zimmerman as President of ADA and Holcomb as charge d’fairs
of Lilly’s Insulin unit, can appear on TV and ridicule
diabetics for noticing that injected insulin causes insulin
reactions as they did on the FOX 13 show, shows where the
bread is buttered.
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