DIABETICS TO BE TRACKED DOWN BY GOVERNMENT AGENTS?

Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and
Elissa Meininger
August 4, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

The New York Health Department is hatching a plan to "require medical labs to report to the city the results of a certain type of test that indicates how well individual patients are controlling their diabetes." That's how New York's Newsday reported the NY Diabetes-Tracking Plan on July 25, 2005.

What happens with those results is anybody's guess. Will investigators from the health department hunt down diabetics and administer treatment on the spot? Will there be diabetes court -like traffic court where patients will be expected to sit through a lecture about the dangers of diabetes? Or will it be like methadone clinics where ex-addicts are forced to line up but instead of methadone Nurse Ratchet will force them to take their diabetes pills or insulin.

New York City was the first American city to track down people with infectious diseases and the idea to track diabetics through medical labs is being prompted by a sharp rise in diabetes deaths over the last 20 years. Diabetes happens to be the fourth leading cause of death in New York City, alone, killing 1,891 in 2003. The cost of treating New Yorkers for diabetes runs into an estimated $5 billion a year.

Tracking diabetics like criminals or carriers of some dreaded social disease is an invasion of privacy of the worst sort. In my opinion it would force people into the allopathic medical model of treating diabetes with drugs instead of educating them about the real cause of the disease -diets loaded with sugar. It would also open the door for other agencies to tamper with your private medical records and/or set the stage to enforce use of dangerous allopathic drugs even though you would prefer to use dietary supplements or other natural healing arts approaches for all manner of maladies.

Unchecked diabetes can cause blindness, kidney failure, amputations and heart problems among other maladies. But, for the most part, adult onset diabetes is a disease of lifestyle -too much sugar and white flour products and not enough exercise.

Diabetes occurs in developing countries when white flour and white sugar products replace the local diet. It takes about 10 years but it's invariable. Just as invariable is the epidemic of adult-onset diabetes in children after about 10 years of a junk food diet. Also inevitable is the occurrence of diabetes in people who are 20 to 30 pounds overweight.

And why aren't we told any of this?

It's because decay of our sweet tooth is the only side effect that the sugar industry will admit occurs with the over consumption of sugar. They don't talk about sugar as a cause heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dozens of other diseases. Neither do they talk about their policy of instituting action against doctors or organizations that raise their voices about the dangers of sugar.

The sugar lobby in Washington has been long known for its hardball tactics and being the largest agricultural industry donor of cash to political campaigns. Considering that sugar represents only one percent of American agricultural receipts and employs only 61,000 people, it gets quite a bang for its buck. It is the one commodity that keeps its foreign competition at bay via a longstanding quota system, which, by the way, also raises prices for consumers by about $1.9 billion a year, according to the Government Accounting Office.

For the record, Americans with a sweet tooth pay 27-28 cents a pound for the sticky stuff while their neighbors in Canada and Mexico pay only 15 cents, such is the power of lobbying to protect the profits of the industry.

In 2003, the sugar industry objected to a scientific report that linked high sugar intake to obesity. This report, a joint effort of the UN's World Health Organization and the Food And Agricultural Organization, recommended limiting sugar to no more than 10 percent of each day's calorie intake. Thanks to industry pressure (backed by that all-important political "donation") the administration as well as Congress threatened the World Health Organization in an attempt to make changes in the report. With the help of lobbyists from the grocery industry and the soft drink industry, the final report came out without referring to the 10 percent recommendation but with a much-watered down statement recommending limiting sugar intake to prevent obesity. In addition, when the new American food pyramid recommendations came out in 2005, sugar was noticeably absent.

The sugar industry never leaves a stone unturned in its battle to retain its prominent place in the food chain. In Death by Modern Medicine I talk about my experience with a Canadian sugar lobby group that complained to my medical licensing body because I said things about sugar on national TV that they didn't want the public to hear. People who didn't know the story were shocked to learn that our medical system is nuttier than an upside down fruit cake that it is punishing doctors who are telling the truth about the dangerous effects of sugar. And you can see why so few doctors speak out about sugar when they get whacked for doing so.

In Death by Modern Medicine I also spoke about Dr. Abram Hoffer, the father of orthomolecular medicine and vitamin therapy for schizophrenia. Dr. Hoffer is convinced that "Sugar is an addiction far stronger than what we see with heroin." He goes on to say that "It is the basic addictive substance from which all other addictions flow. Refined sugar and all refined foods such as polished rice, white flour, and the like, are nothing more than legalized poisons."

Who's minding the cookie jar? If doctors aren't doing their job, who is protecting our health from the harmful effects of sugar? You would think it should be the Canadian and American Diabetic Associations, which are tremendously busy dealing with the epidemic of diabetes -and collecting big bucks to "find the cure". However, both organizations insist that diabetes has no known cause. In a paper published by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association the authors claim that researchers do not know why diabetes occurs, but they know sugar doesn't cause it. And according to the same group, most people with diabetes can enjoy sugar in limited amounts.

Some researchers blame diabetes on genetics. To say diabetes is genetic is a corrupt evasion of the truth. The incredible rise in the incidence of diabetes does not indicate a sudden change in genes but points to an environmental cause. What is in the environment? Sugar! Epidemiologists report that when refined sugar finds its way into developing nations it takes about ten to fifteen years for all the diseases of modern civilization to come swooping down.

Diabetic associations also claim that diabetes is incurable but can be treated with drugs that stimulate insulin production. However, the most common type of diabetes, adult onset diabetes, is not caused by a deficiency of insulin -just the opposite -there is too much insulin produced to deal with high sugar diets that eventually ends up making cells "insulin resistant" which is the first stage of diabetes.

We must be aware that both Canadian and American Diabetic Associations obtain their funding from food and drug companies. Follow the money and you will understand what is driving modern medicine and health foundations to turn a blind eye to sugar. Don't bite the hand that feeds you is the message from the food and drug industry when they give grants and donations to universities, hospitals, and disease foundations.

Rather than monitoring people and urging them to see their doctor to obtain a drug, a much better plan would be to stop the drug ads on TV and force drug companies to spend that money on public clinics that teach the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. A fresh foods diet, exercise, and relaxation techniques are the real way to treat diabetes and most other chronic diseases in our overfed and undernourished population.

While the sugar lobby has done a spectacular job promoting its poison, the bare knuckles fight in the world of sugar substitutes is equally appalling. It will be the subject of next week's column.

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