Hurray For Life!

That was the headline of last fall's Diabetes Living, the newsletter of the Canadian Diabetes Association, Yukon Division. The story was about a bright young university student who had been diagnosed with diabetes and her indomitable determination to "manage" the disease. (Cure is out of the question.)

The rest of the newsletter indoctrinates the reader with the message: if our promising young people who fall victim to diabetes are going to be helped, Canadians must give! More money is needed for research through lotteries, grants and, of course, private donations. From you and me.

And you better have life insurance--so get it now, while you're healthy. Because most insurance companies won't insure folks with diabetes. They're not expected to live a normal life span. And since diabetes is on the increase, you might be the next victim! In fact, a Medical Post article ends with a cynical statement by one doctor who said he "avoids making a final diagnoses of diabetes . . . until I have counseled my patients to get their mortgages and their life insurance nailed down."

That's the medical point of view.

The "alternative" point of view is that diabetes is a disease of civilization: the result of generations of people eating processed and refined foods that lack vitamins, minerals and enzymes for proper nutrition, digestion and assimilation. The struggling pancreas and the digestive organs give up. The body is unable to metabolize the fake foods fed to it from infancy and the only hope is to go back to the beginning. Refuse civilized foods and return to the traditional diets of your ancestors.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention report that diabetes jumped 33 per cent between 1990 and 1998. The steepest rise is among those in their 30s. Diabetes is the epidemic of the millennium and pandemic among aboriginals in Canada. Indo-Canadians are two to three times more likely to develop diabetes than the rest of the population, according to the Diabetes Association.

Dollars for Data-Gathering
At last year's joint annual conference of the Canadian Diabetes Association and the Canadian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism, officials announced a $115 million, five-year initiative aimed at helping to prevent and control diabetes. It's called the Canadian Diabetes Strategy, an "information-gathering system" to show the "true magnitude and scope of the disease" for the first time. Those millions of dollars--which of course is your money--is just for gathering data. It's jobs, jobs, jobs, for bureaucrats, administrators and systems analysts.

The Medical Post acknowledges, "Poor diet, lack of exercise and an aging population are expected to increase this [disease] momentum, with a projected doubling of diabetes prevalence in the next 10 years . . . Complications of cardiovascular and kidney disease are expected to multiply the public health burden even further." (Oct 24, 2000)

Early osteoporosis is another risk. So is erectile dysfunction. And the Canadian Diabetes Association says that over two million Canadians have diabetes.

The Canadian government's response to the emerging epidemic, however, is not to find out what is wrong with the modern diet and lifestyle to explain modern diseases, but to speed the propaganda machine, through all media outlets!

It takes us back to the War on Cancer some years ago. Then as now, government agencies and universities were busy cajoling Canadians to part from their hard-earned dollars "for research, education, service and advocacy" yet cancer has increased to one person in three.

Be forewarned, folks!

The goal of the Canadian Diabetes Association is not to uncover the progress of the failing pancreas through the generations, but to ensure the continuing health of the international pharmaceutical industry. To do this they need funds from frightened people who see their health care system collapsing, their children and grandchildren threatened by debilitating disease and/or death and with no help in sight other than the carrot at the end of the ever-longer stick: more studies, more conferences, more strategies, more money poured down the bottomless government well. More propaganda in support of a Diabetes Strategy that concentrates on data-gathering: setting standards for diagnostic information, arguing the legal and political ramifications with the provinces and "establishing federal, provincial and constitutional powers . . . and privacy issues."

Privacy?

As if people care about keeping their health secrets when all they want is the medical community to show leadership in helping them get well!