Sadly it will probably receive very little consideration.

There's a reason most regulations are written in blood.

While there is usually some big case that then defines things like this, I'm worried whether any incidents of a person dying or developing life-threatening issues due their phone being confiscated will change much. We've historically erred on the side of police exercising their power to enforce laws.

What happens when an officer confiscates your glucose monitor today? I assume you die and they claim they did it for some valid reason or the other.

Or just withholding the insulin itself: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/diabetes-police/

Wow, that article is wild. For those who are not aware, ketoacidosis is when your body metabolizes fat for energy in the absence of insulin. This produces byproducts (keytone bodies) that raise the pH of the blood.

So, having ketoacidosis feels like having your blood turn to acid. Death from ketoacidosis is an excruciating death. Fermenting from the inside out as your heart pumps your increasingly acidic blood through your entire body. You're technically starving, so you're hungry, but at the same time your body is trying to expel glucose at all costs, so everything you look at makes you sick.

Extended periods of high blood glucose and lack of insulin especially is up there as one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever experienced personally. Just unimaginable cruelty.

Can confirm, feels like crap.

They jail you, give you low quality food, and eventually the jailer may send a medical team to manage your type 2 diabetes -- most likely with a finger prick and test strip; and they'll give you dietary guidelines that the jail/prison food doesn't satisfy.

US version; (oh, and they'll charge you for the medical care)

Yes, but you can't easily use your non-smartphone glucose monitor as a communications device to manage a bunch of drug dealers which can't be confiscated because your life depends on it. That changes once it's your smartphone.

See, my point is that they’ll do it already when it’s not even reasonable to do so. So when they take your phone away, which can be done so more credibly, why would you expect more protections?

Do they? I'm not aware of cases (but generally not up to date on topics like this, genuinely curious)

Call it malice or ignorance, it is hard to tell. I have personally visited someone who did not get insulin for a whole night in jail, ended up with extremly high blood sugar (DKA) (s)he had to be hospitilized for three days. There were no penalties for the officers.

Basically someone with diabetes can seem to be a very unhealthy and drunk person, and people do not tend to take these people serisouly.

Type 1 diabetics have been managing their insulin for decades with occasional blood sugar testing - i.e. certainly not testing for every dose. They’d be fine to manage things for a period without a confiscated monitor.

> Type 1 diabetics have been managing their insulin for decades with occasional blood sugar testing - i.e. certainly not testing for every dose. They’d be fine to manage things for a period without a confiscated monitor.

This is similar to saying "X person can survive without y medicine which has only been around for 10 years". Or "people survived fine without seatbelts for so many years".

That's a classic survivorship bias, because a ton of diabetics didn't survive, who'd possibly have a much higher chance of surviving today with current tech. Heck, I personally know the brother of a late diabetic who would've been alive today if he had a phone connected to a CGM because of it's low glucose alarm function.

I understand HN is a place for discussion, but in potentially deadly situations like this, it's worth avoiding to make statements against medical care.

There are people who connect insulin pumps to their CGM. There will be situations where people can't quickly switch to manual BG management after setting up an automated solution.

Hi, Type 1 diabetic here.

I can fast for days, my blood sugar does not go down.

On my last 4 day fast, my blood sugar stayed within about 20Mg/Dl.

And no, I cannot manage without my medical devices. Or are you telling me that I should fast for the entirety of police custody?

> They’d be fine…

But before long there will be diabetics that never really learned to do that because they never had to. Even people that have done that for decades still mess up dosing sometimes.

How likely is it that someone might die? I don’t know. But saying they will be fine might not be fair.

> They’d be fine to manage things for a period without a confiscated monitor.

That could go very wrongly if they're already at the end of the safety period when they're grabbed by the cops.

Software as a Medical Device has been a regulated "thing" for years now, and in this case the Abbott Freestyle app is a mandatory requirement for the CGM To function. If the app can't connect to the CGM, the thing will make your phone beep incessantly. Similarly, if your blood glucose levels exceed "safe" thresholds, it will alert at full volume in a way you are not allowed to override. Frankly, this is as it should be, but it does indeed convolute things when the device interface (phone) is used for so much more, too.

Interesting, never thought about that. Also wonder what happens in Airplane mode / poor reception?

it's all BLE and works great on an airplane as long as BT is on

CGMs use bluetooth

Bluetooth has a terrible reputation around reliability. :(

In the loop community (CGM+insuling pump) you usually have a list of phones that work well with Bluetooth. Yes that changes when the phones get new powersaving settings and driver updates, usually it works well on good phones.

Yeah, that sounds like a practical approach for dealing with it. :)

The cops will probably deliberately keep it from you as a threat.