Diabetes and Donuts: Time to Stop the Stereotypes

Earlier this week, President Obama playfully skewered his Republican opponents calling them "cray" for dismissing the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. He then joked: "If you go to 100 doctors, and 99 of them tell you you have diabetes, you wouldn't say, 'Ah, that's a conspiracy. All 99 doctors got together with Obama to keep me from having bacon and donuts.'" As the mother of a 6-year-old son with type 1 diabetes, I was surprised that the president, whom I greatly admire and respect, made this joke just a couple of days after he declared November 2015 as National Diabetes Month, stating supportively: "We recognize the impact diabetes has on people's lives, and we rededicate our talents, skills, and knowledge to preventing, treating, and curing it." And, apparently, joking about it. I am certain neither the president, nor his staff gave the seemingly inoffensive joke a second thought. And I realize that it was not a joke about diabetes, rather it paired diabetes and donuts to make a humorous analogy. Therein lies the issue for me: the offhanded way so many people use inaccurate, dated, and sometimes offensive and stigmatizing stereotypes about diabetes, for a laugh. Diabetes isn't funny. It's serious. And in my son's case deadly serious. Type 1 diabetes (T1D), the most acute form of diabetes, is an autoimmune disease, in which the body's immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas -- and without insulin my son will die. Even th...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news