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Thursday, July 5th, 2012

The Global Diabetes Epidemic, Brought to You by Global Development

Author:     NEAL EMERY
Source:     The Atlantic
Publication Date:     Jul 2 2012, 10:46 AM ET
 Link: The Global Diabetes Epidemic, Brought to You by Global Development
Stephan:   The entire industrial food system is broken at the most fundamental level. Like the Illness Profit System its function is to produce profit, not wellness. It begins with hormones, additives, and antibiotics given to animals, fish, and fowl raised under appalling conditions; that progresses to processing based principally on more additives, fat and, especially, sugar being added. This system, now run by Virtual Corporate States, is literally killing us. It is, however, making the Food VCSes, and the individuals that control them, enormously rich, so nothing else really matters. I have been following these trends since the 1970s, and it just gets worse and worse. When I was a boy what was then known as Adult Onset Diabetes -- now known as Type II Diabetes -- was virtually unknown in children. Today, 8.3 per cent of the American population, including 25.8 million children have Type I or II diabetes. You would think it would occur to someone in power that something was seriously awry with the way this whole system is set up. But is clear with this and a hundred reports like it, that the only thing that really matters is the profits.

As globalization exports our culture across the world, it also spreads our health problems. For much of the 20th century, a person’s likelihood to develop type-2 diabetes depended as much on the wealth of their nation as their biology. Those living in the developed world survived to old age and eventually succumbed to ‘diseases of affluence’: cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. In contrast, undernourishment, violence, and communicable diseases ravaged the health of residents of developing countries.

And this is the way things remain in the developed world: even in poor parts of the United States, almost no one dies of tuberculosis. But in low- and middle-income countries, the distinction fades. The ‘diseases of affluence’ have embedded themselves in communities anything but affluent. Now, cholera strikes next door to cancer; the malnourished and diabetic share a roof.

In this new landscape of health in the developing world, the impact of diabetes is momentous. Since 1980, the number of diabetics worldwide has ballooned from 152 million to between 285 and 347 million today. Of these, three-quarters live in the developing world, where diabetes afflicts more than six times as many people as HIV. Why, if infectious diseases persist and life expectancies remain low, has […]

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