A Call To Action (Insulin is NOT a Cure!)
Today is D-Blog day, an opportunity for the diabetic bloggers to try and get the word out about diabetes and trying to live with it (or perhaps to live despite it).Let me admit up front that I stole this article title from Sarah's wonderful post.
If you've heard about diabetes, you've certainly heard about insulin. That wonderful hormone that's produced by your pancreas and that does an excellent job of regulating your blood sugar - that is if you don't have diabetes.
If you do have Type 1 diabetes, then your pancreas is dead, it's a stiff, it has passed on! OK, I'm going overboard a bit but your pancreas doesn't produce insulin anymore.
No problem, you say, you can just get it and inject it. If only it was that simple.
Insulin is not a cure.
In the 1920's Banting and Best first 'discovered' insulin. Shortly afterwards companies starting making insulin using chopped up cow and pig pancreases. Sounds kind of gross, huh?
Guess what... Things haven't really changed all that much since then.
Insulin manufacturing is a bit better. And insulin delivery devices are much better. We've gone from testing urine to testing blood to determine how much insulin we need. Neither of these options was available in the 1920's.
But for the most part, not a lot has changed since then.
For most people going on insulin is really a long-term sentence. Sentenced to a life of:
- Daily blood sugar testing.
- Daily worrying about long-term complications.
- Daily calculation of the amount of food you're eating.
- Daily concerns about exercise, sickness, emotional swings.
Despite all of this, most folks that I know who have diabetes are remarkably upbeat, and have accomplished all the 'normal' things that others do with their lives.
My question is: why does it have to be so hard?
This is not a trivial disease. According to estimates at least 1,000,000 people in America alone have Type 1 diabetes.
If each of these are testing their blood sugar 4 times daily, then this amounts to 4 million test strips a day at an approximate cost of $2 million every day, or three quarters of a Billion dollars every year spent in America just to test our blood sugars.
Now add the cost of syringes, insulin, alcohol swabs, pump supplies, glucagon, ambulance rides, eye treatment, kidney treatment, amputations, etc., etc.
Have I got your attention yet?
If we got serious about working on a real cure for diabetes, not an improved form of treatment, imagine the cost savings. Imagine what all those wonderful people would do when released from the burden of caring for their diabetes.
What are we waiting for?
So here's my call to action.
Why not write to your legislator and ask them if they support increased National Institutes for Health spending on research towards a diabetes cure? That might get the ball rolling.
posted by Bernard @ 6:41 PM
9 Comments:
Thanks for your comment Bernard - I was glad to hear from you!
Great post (again!)!
I remember back in the early 2000's looking at some statistics from the late 1990's. These stats estimated the annual cost to be something like 136 BILLION per year, and rapidly increasing.
The economics of treating diabetes are staggering.
Thanks for calling attention to it, and encouraging people to take action.
You are right - INSULIN IS NOT A CURE. Whatever we can do, as a community, to raise awareness should be done.
Great post!!
Bernard,
You got my attention! Thank you for the call to action.
Happy D-blog day to you, sir.
Hey Bernard,
You are absolutely right. By the way, a few weeks ago, you posted a comment on my blog post "Halloween and Competition in the Sugar Market" referencing the lack of competition in the test strip market. I finally responded to your comment, but it bears repeating here.
You're 100% correct about test strips and a lack of competition - generic or otherwise. Believe it or not, at one time, there actually WAS one generic test strip manufacturer, and that company was based in your home state of Massachusetts (actually, they were a Scottish company with U.S. HQ there). Do you remember a Waltham-based company called Inverness Medical Inc.? Probably not, since Johnson & Johnson's Lifescan division acquired the company in 2001.
I'm not sure why U.S. antitrust regulators did not even question that, but if you examine the SEC filings, you see the issue of reducing competition never even came up in the hearings.
Patent law also plays a role here. Ever wonder why after a few years, the manufacturers make minor changes to the strips and call them "new and improved"? For example, J&J/Lifescan once sold a meter and test strips called "FastTake", which were modified only slightly to become the OneTouch Ultra. I would expect a new version in the next few years, since the OneTouch Ultra patents will start to expire shortly. Basically, this pattern enables them to extend the life of their patents without having to do much of anything. Its kind of an underhanded thing to do, but as publicly-held companies, they do have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. Universal healthcare would go a long way towards addressing this, and perhaps the new rules in Massachusetts will show the rest of the U.S. how to do it!
Anyway, thanks for another great post!
Regards,
Scott
There are times when the disease gets the best of me and I then wonder if all this $$$ to be made is the true reason we've yet to see a cure.
that museum would rock!
(stolen from scotty) Great Post!
<3
Great post, which I am just now reading.
A friend of mine (also diabetic) and I used to joke that the cure was out there but the test strip companies were doing their best to squash it. I don't really think that's true, but it is amazing how much $$ is spent on diabetes treatments in this country. (And on medical care in general. It's sickening. ha ha.)
I think it's great that you are taking some action towards finding a cure. Best wishes with your fundraising.
-Anne
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