The ADA just announced that they've brought in Laurence Hausner to head the organization. Housner is a businessman who is an expert in "branding" whose last two jobs involved leading the Multiple Sclerosis Society and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society where it appears enhanced fundraising was a major achievement of his leadership.
The ADA press release announcing his appointment says of his work at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, "As Chief Operating Officer, Hausner had oversight and management of all of the Society's operations, including revenue generation, finance, information technology, patient services, public policy, marketing, human resources and field management."
What the ADA's new CEO isn't is a person with diabetes. Which means that there isn't a hope in hell that he will push the organization to change the toxic advice it keeps giving people with diabetes--such as the advice posted on their web site that it might be dangerous for any person with diabetes to strive for "tight control" defined as a blood sugar of 180 mg/dl 2 hours after a meal and that bananas, oatmeal, and bread are the ideal diet for a person with diabetes--even those controlling their blood sugar with "diet" alone.
Clearly this new CEO's mission will be to raise even more money and build the ADA brand. That means avoiding any policy shifts that might annoy the ADA's top donors who include Cadbury Schweppes (the candy maker) and the bunch of other snack food purveyors who fund the organization now, as well as the drug companies that make the oral drugs the ADA's educational material treat as the only legitimate treatment for the very high blood sugars caused by the "diabetic" diet of high carb foods they have spent a fortune promoting to dietitians and doctors.
Is it really possible there isn't a qualified executive out there who has diabetes? Someone who might not see diabetes as "a heartbreaking disease" to use Hausner's words, but as a challenge that they have personally surmounted? Someone who has actually tested his or her blood sugar after a high carb meal and has some clue as to what it takes to avoid high blood sugars?
It's hard to believe there isn't. But it has been clear for years that the ADA is not an organization that answers to people with diabetes. Instead, it appears to serve those who profit from those who have diabetes, be it the doctors who treat their endless series of complications, the drug companies who sell them thousands of dollars worth of drugs a year, and the food companies who sell them crap that raises their blood sugar despite the ADA logo on the label.
So that leads me to one last question: Why do we people with diabetes let an organization full of people who don't have diabetes represent our disorder and be its voice in the world at large? Why do we let them define the appropriate treatments for our condition when they make it clear that they are driven by concerns other than attaining normal health for people with diabetes?
Finally, when will people with diabetes band together and start an organization that has as its primary concern NOT the building of the Diabetes brand--not the slathering of that brand on products guaranteed to raise the blood sugar of people with diabetes--but to spreading the knowledge that we already have of what it takes to achieve normal health after a diagnosis of diabetes.
An American Association of People With Diabetes might dedicate itself to teaching the public that that people who achieve normal blood sugars, no matter what their diagnosis, can have normal health, that they shouldn't settle for the dangerously high blood sugars the ADA has taught their doctors to call "good control," that the ADA's recommended A1c of 7% has been proven to lead to severe complications for most people with Type 2 diabetes and many with Type 1. Such an organization that might actually get across to the rest of the public at risk of diabetes and to the media that if you cut back on sugar and starch you can bring down your blood sugar because it is carbs, not fat, that harm the health of people with diabetes!
What a dreamer, eh?
Copyright Janet Ruhl 2007. If you are NOT reading this on http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com the content has been STOLEN.
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