Act for People with Diabetes.

Hey it is video day! We are joining with Kerri at SixUntilMe and sharing a videos today encouraging actions on diabetes.





Sign the petition: 
http://www.change.org/petitions/us-food-and-drug-administration-sponsor-a-patient-meeting-on-diabetes

Join StripSafely:
http://www.stripsafely.com/join/

One of Three

To Perpetuity.

Diabetes doesn't end. This fantastic piece from the Diabetes Art Day collection, by the Gulo family, makes that clear. 

Diabetes is a disease not a character flaw. A disease that 25 million american live with, significantly more than that if the undiagnosed are includes. Some estimates put that 'significantly more' as ONE in THREE Americans.

FDA is is holding patient meetings to provide "a more systematic approach to obtaining the patient perspective on certain disease areas." Diabetes isn't on of them. Let's Change that

1 in 3

diatribe.org/petition

 One in three of us have it and the other two loves someone who does. I have asked FDA for a patient meeting on diabetes. Join me, sign the petition, get two loved ones to sign too.

Be one of three

FDA / Sponsor a Patient Meeting on Diabetes

The Food and Drug Administration has begun to hold a series of patient meetings to gain a better understanding of specific diseases. Over the next five years, the agency plans to conduct at least 20 such meetings on conditions ranging from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to Narcolepsy to Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

But not diabetes.

That is unacceptable.

Four “slots” remain open (view the current list), and we want the FDA to add diabetes to its meeting docket for 2013.

According to the American Diabetes Association, nearly 26 million Americans have either type 1 or type 2 diabetes, and an additional 79 million have prediabetes. Those numbers are also increasing each year – the CDC estimates that if current trends continue, one in three US adults will have diabetes by 2050.

No one disputes that diabetes is one of America’s – and the world’s – most serious health epidemics. In 2012, more than one in five total US healthcare dollars was spent on diabetes, totaling $245 billion, and the government covered 62% of those costs, meaning everyone is paying for this epidemic. Despite growing needs, research dollars have also leveled off.

New therapies need to be investigated, tested, and brought to market, and as part of that process, the FDA must understand the daily challenges that patients face.

We need to tell our story to the FDA: about the need for accurate strips, more physiologic insulin, a broader range of drugs, and the Artificial Pancreas.

Our voices need to be heard.

Please sign this petition to urge the FDA to sponsor a patient meeting focused on diabetes – and the sooner, the better.

Thank you very much.

You can sign the petition here:

Diatribe.org/petition

YDMV on PDUFA

Hang Together, Not a Check Box

This week I am joining Karen and many others in D-Blog Week.

Today's topic is, "We the Undersigned." 

Our prompt of Today is: 

Recently various petitions have been circulating the Diabetes Online Community, so today let’s pretend to write our own. Tell us who you would write the petition to – a person, an organization, even an object (animate or inanimate) - get creative!! What are you trying to change and what have you experienced that makes you want this change?

Hang Together.

Petitions need to be a call to action not a check box. 

Consider the most prominent of all American petitions the Declaration of Independence. The people who signed that were committed to action. It was an act of treason against mother England. We all know Ben Franklin’s, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Think about that, this wasn't a casual thing, clearly it was outside the signors comfort zone. 

Signing meant the risking being hanging by the British if captured. That is not an understatement . The signors had more than a little skin in the game. These days signing a petition often is little more than a Facebook like. I am not sure there is any lower common denominator of approval than that a Facebook like and that many petitions are at best only tiny bit more than that. 

I think we need skin in the game. A willingness to give some kind of effort towards the change that petitions seek. To do so means we have given a little more than a quick glance at the matter and are willing to actually be involved in what ever revolution we are signing up for. 

So I am all for a petition that is not so much signed as a movement that is joined. Here is a cause to think about joining: Look at the amounts invested in research per patient for AIDS, Breast Cancer and Diabetes. This chart is from my friend Manny who got the numbers here. 

Sure it is fun to click away to petition for funding a Death Star. If we are going to petition let it be more than a silly click and be about something meaningful. Research is something for which the diabetes community should “petition the government for a redress of grievance.”  If that last bit sound familiar, it come from Franklin’s day. Written by people that know what a petition was, it is the last line of the First Amendment to the Constitution. 

Let do something not just click something.