Blindness, amputation and kidney failure are no longer guaranteed and I'm grateful as heck for that. For now I'll count my blessings: one of which is the fact that my wife has yet to find me laid out in a diabetic coma -- something that was very, very common less than 50 years ago.
Yes, died essentially because the equipment wasn't as good back then (he was born in the late 1930s, died in the 1980s) as it is now.
He also taught me to program when I was 7 (by pairing together on a ZX Spectrum!).
Awesome that his hacker spirit lives on in you...
I realize that what works for me won't necessarily work for others, but I have a really hard time complaining in light of the fact that I regularly achieve A1Cs of less than 6.3 with nothing more than a glucose meter, syringes and some Humalog. Maybe I'm lucky, but testing sugars 4-8 times a day and injecting before every meal isn't hard work.
Perhaps our demise will be miserable but for now I'm grateful for my current quality of life. It could be so much worse.
In the meantime, here's to fighting the good fight.
How much is paid by those producers of sugar in tax, and how much of that tax is used for research?
I agree with your general point though.
Sugar production in the US is heavily subsidized.
Thankfully, the inverse is largely true as well. Develop diabetes, and if you lose enough weight, you can often avoid the need for meds altogether. I was just diagnosed as a type II diabetic about 3 months ago... they originally had me on injectable insulin and Metformin, but as I've lost weight (17 lbs in ~ 3 months) and switched to a low carb diet, I've been able to stop taking insulin and still see my blood glucose numbers move closer and closer to stabilizing in the normal range.
I'm hoping (and my doctor seems confident) that if I lose more weight and stay active (and eat right) that I'll be able to drop the Metformin eventually.
One thing this experience has taught me though, has been a much greater appreciate for the evils of simple sugars and high glycemic index carbs. I now look at a bottle of (non diet) soda and the idea of drinking that shit just makes me sick.
A 3" orange has about 14 g of sugar.
12 oz (a 355 ml can) of coca cola has 39 g of sugar.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the data here, but it looks like many people and many millions of dollars are devoted to solving real world problems like the one Scott Hanselman has.
[1] General Disease research numbers http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx
[2] Diabetes funding by project http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending_project_listing.a...