Posted by klausen on June 24, 2003 at 15:32:05:
In Reply to: Larry King -Credit Where Credit is Due posted by Dennis on June 24, 2003 at 12:50:02:
Ms. Moore deserves congratulations for her concise, effective comments at the beginning of the interview, but towards the end she slid off into a few of the usual silly remarks that plague conversations about diabetes. It was foolish, for example, to say that there has been great progress in the last thirty years, when in fact the only answer medical science has been able to come up with to the threats of renal failure and blindness has been to produce finer needles and more efficient blood sugar testing in a disease which cannot be controlled no matter how often the patient tests! It reminds me of when I was first diagnosed as a type-1 diabetic 37 years ago and at a lecture at the Joslin's Clinic we new patients were told that the only thing to do to reduce the chances of spontaneous amputation of the toes and feet was to wear white socks, since the absence of dyes made them less likely to promote infection!
Mary Tyler Moore should also have been brave enough to criticize the pump, one of the most overrated toys in the history of medicine, which was only considered worth developing in the first place as part of a closed-loop system which would test the glucose level and then automatically release the right amount of insulin. Without this component, it is little more than a more convenient way to inject insulin -- and a figleaf to disguise the shame of medical science in not being able to make any real progress.