Lessons for the Diabetes Community from the Cancer World

I just read a very disturbing book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis. Suffice it to say that if you are easily scared, you should not read this book.

Dr. Davis is a distinguished epidemiologist. Her subject in this book is how the companies that profit from selling cancer causing products coopted the very organizations and government organs set up to "fight cancer." She describes how the American Cancer Society was taken over by people from the tobacco industry who used the mantra, "This needs further study" to keep the organization from letting the public know that as early as the 1930s scientists had proved very conclusively that cigarettes caused cancer, and that the more a person smoked the more likely they were to develop cancer.

The tobacco industry provided a great deal of funding for the American Cancer Society and one way it kept the public from learning how dangerous their products were was to fund research into other obscure causes of cancer, which was done to downplay the role their product was playing in the huge rise in lung cancer that followed the addiction of millions of soldiers to cigarettes in World War I.

An even more disturbing finding that Davis documents is the way that industries that produce cancerous chemicals have for decades paid researchers to research the cancer causing properties of their products and the chemicals used to make their products, but kept their results hidden from the wider scientific community. Companies have known for decades that workers in their plants were dying horrible deaths from exposure to chemicals used in their workplace, but kept this secret. In some industries, chemicals were used that caused 100% of all workers to get cancer after 25 years on the job. Nevertheless though scientists working for these companies knew this, the information was kept completely secret, because revealing it would reduce corporate profits. That people died because of the secrets they kept was just too bad.

What does this have to do with diabetes?

Well, the ADA has had the same role in the diabetes world that the ACS had in the cancer world. Funded largely by companies that make the high carb products that worsen blood sugar and the drug companies that profit mightily when people eat those products, the ADA has fought for decades against letting the public know that it is carbohydrates that raise blood sugar and that people with diabetes can control their diabetes by lowering their carbohydrate intake substantially.


Any time research proves that cutting out most carbohydrates from your diet--especially those supposedly "healthy whole grains"--improves the health of people with diabetes, the ADA says, "More studies are needed." Meanwhile they put their stamp of approval on high carb junk foods made by companies like Campbells "One gram of salt per serving" Soup.

The ADA has put millions of dollars into convincing people with diabetes that sugar is good for them. Not so coincidentally a top ADA sponsor is Cadbury Schweppes, the candy and soda maker. Check out the annotated list of ADA sponsors as of August 2006 . The company has removed the list of sponsors from the page linked on that entry, probably because it was so damning. But their sponsors continue to be companies that sell you food that makes you more diabetic or expensive drugs you will need if you eat that kind of food.

Like the American Cancer Society, the ADA raises huge amounts of money from the victim of the disease their policies have made more widespread. These donors do not realize that just as the ACS's leadership was full of chemical industry and cigarette company lobbyists, the ADA's leadership is not made up of people with diabetes or of doctors, but of laymen whose corporate connections are not made public, but who probably have long histories of connections with the drug and junk food companies.

Just as the ACS kept the public from knowing for 20 years that cigarettes caused cancer, the ADA has fought to keep you from knowing that it is carbohydrates that raise blood sugar and that a "healthy diet" for a person with diabetes is one that does not raise the blood sugar over normal limits.

Recently a news release went out to say that the ADA has decided to soften its long held hostile stance against recommending low carbohydrate diets for people with diabetes. Well, don't get your hopes up. The outcry against their dangerous and outdated dietary advice has gotten so loud they have to do some kind of spin control. But a "diabetes" organization that in 2007 still defines "tight control" as a blood sugar that drops to 180 mg/dl (10 mmol/L) at 2 hours after eating, and does not mention the word "carbohydrate" once on their Tight Diabetes Control web page is not about to tell anyone to stop eating the diet that is killing them. Not when the funds that pay the salaries of the mystery people who run the organization are paid by huge corporate junk food and drug makers.

The venality documented in Davis' book is terrifying. I had naively thought that the mess that is diabetes treatment was the result of our having a non-glamorous disease people think is caused by our own bad habits. Davis' book makes it clear that callous disregard for the public, deceptive advertising, and cooking the research to hide results that might cost some company money are standard operating procedure throughout the health establishment.

The end-of-life repentances of the cigarette and chemical executives who spent their lives misleading people about the safety of their products do not begin to atone for the hundreds of thousands of people they killed. Will the ADA executives and their self-serving sponsors who fund the organization to ensure that their products continue to find a market, ever come to grips with the way they have caused generations of Americans to go blind, lose their feet, and go on dialysis?

Probably not. After all, unlike those cigarette industry folks who eventually got cancer from their own product, the ADA denizens don't have diabetes, they only profit from it.