History of Diabetes

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History

 

In the 1880's German scientists wondered what was

the

function of the Pancreas in anatomy. When they removed the Pancreas

from

a dog, they noted that its blood sugar rose uncontrollably. Thus the

disease

that produced high blood sugar came to be known as Diabetes and became

identified with a nonfunctioning or improperly functioning Pancreas.

Later

when Insulin was identified as the causal agent in controlling blood

sugar,

a search was launched to isolate and synthesize Insulin.

In 1922, three Canadian nobel prize winners,

Banting,

Best and Macleod succeeded in saving the life of a fourteen year old

diabetic

girl in Toronto General Hospital with injectable Insulin. Eli Lilly was

licensed to manufacture this new wonder drug and the medical community

basked in the glory of a job well done. For a time Diabetes, as a

disease,

was controllable if not curable. No one liked the idea that the

diabetic

patient had to be supplied with Insulin all of his life, but the idea

became

accepted as better than premature death.

It wasn't until 1933 that rumors about this disease

surfaced

in a paper presented by Joslyn, Dublin and Marks and printed in the

American

Journal of Medicine. This paper "Studies on Diabetes Mellitus",

discussed a major epidemic of a disease that looks very much like the

Diabetes

of the early 1920's only it does not respond to the wonder drug,

Insulin.

Even worse, sometimes Insulin treatment kills the patient. This disease

became known as Insulin Resistant Diabetes because it had the symptoms

of Diabetes, but did not respond well to Insulin therapy. Treatment of

this disease by diet was started during this period.

Diabetes, which had a per capita incidence of

0.0028%

at the turn of the century, had by 1933, zoomed 1000% to become a

disease

faced by many doctors. This disease was destined to go on to affect

half

of our population and to incapacitate almost 20% by the 1990's.

It wasn't until 1950 that the medical community was

able

to perform serum Insulin assays. This quickly revealed that the disease

wasn't Diabetes, at least not in the accepted classical understanding

of

Diabetes. This new disease was characterized by sufficient, often

excessive

Insulin in the blood. The problem was that the Insulin didn't seem to

work

to reduce blood sugar; it was ineffective. But, since the disease had

been

known as Diabetes for almost twenty years it was renamed Type II

diabetes

to distinguish it from the earlier Type 1 diabetes

characterized

by insufficient insulin production by the pancreas.

In 1949, faced by what appeared to be an

uncontrollable

epidemic of the so called Insulin Resistant Diabetes, the medical

community

reorganized itself into the competing medical specialties that we see

today.

Thus the "Heart Specialist", "Endocrinologist", "Allergist",

"Intestinal Disease Specialist", the "Cancer Specialist"

and many others started. Of course, all of these symptoms of this new

disease

became diseases in their own right. Heart failure for example, which

had

been previously understood often to be but a symptom of Diabetes, now

became

a disease not directly connected to Diabetes. It became fashionable to

think that diabetes "increased" Cardio-vascular risk. The causal

role of a failed Blood Sugar Control System (BSCS) in Heart Failure

became

obscured.

A year later, in 1950, a search was launched for

another

"wonder drug" to deal with the Type II diabetes problem. The

ideal drug would be, like Insulin, effective in remitting obvious

adverse

symptoms of the disease, but not effective in curing the underlying

disease.

It would be needed continually for the remaining life of the patient.

It

would have to be patentable; that is, it could not be a natural

medication

because these are non-patentable. Like Insulin, it would be economical

to manufacture and distribute. Mandatory goverment approvals would be

required

to stimulate the use by physicians as a prescription drug. Testing

required

for these approvals would have to be enormously expensive to prevent

other,

unapproved medications from becoming competitive. If the drug had

unexpected

side effects, they could always be explained away by the fact that the

disease was worse than the side effects. If the patient died, well, we

did our best but this is after all a dangerous disease.

Consider; any drug that would really cure the

disease

would also put the drug manufacturer out of business in short order due

to a lack of customers. Also any drug that was a natural agent, that

could

not be patented, was not only not a suitable drug company investment

but

had to be suppressed as unacceptable competition. The reason for this

is

the huge advertising budget for a natural, unpatented product could not

be protected from other companies simply selling the product also

without

incurring any advertising costs. If the natural competing drug actually

worked better than the synthetic drug, all the more reason to suppress

it by force of law and to jail its proponents as quacks.

So it was important that the drug be patentable and

not

natural, effective enough to relieve symptoms, but not effective enough

to cure the disease. The medical community also benefited from this

approach,

not only through the prescription monopoly that they enjoyed, but

because

the strategy produced the repeat business that they also needed in

order

to prosper economically.

Thus, was implemented the classic medical protocol

of

"treating the symptoms". By doing this, both the drug company

and the doctor could stay in business and the patient, while not being

cured, was often relieved of his symptoms. Enough money changed hands

to

make the American medical establishment the richest in the world.

Unfortunately

their patients have not been served as well.

It is important to note that prior to this time the

medical

goal was to cure disease because the patients usually would not accept

anything less. After the introduction of Insulin sucessfully re-trained

patients not to expect to be cured, the same commercial technique was

applied

to the new Hypoglycemic agents. Today all of the Hypoglycemic agents

marketed

to "control" Type II diabetes meet the original commercial criteria

that we have listed above.

In 1955 the oral hypoglycemic drugs were introduced

that

have been with us for almost five decades. Some of these drugs, notably

Rezulin, have been known to kill patients; yet, they remain on the

market

for unexplainable lengths of time with regulatory agency approval.

Today almost half of the people in the country

suffer

from one or more symptoms of this disease and it has become well known

to physicians asType II diabetes, "Insulin Resistant Diabetes, Insulin

Resistance, or more rarely Hyperinsulinemia. One wonders why this

"stealth

disease" has so many aliases.

When research scientists tried to make sense out of

these

disease aliases they found conventional medical terminology too

confusing

to allow useful communication among themselves about the disease. How

can you discuss a disease that had as many aliases as there are medical

specialties? How does one discuss a disease with their peers that

has

literally dozens, if not hundreds, of major symptoms and no apparent

causative

mechanism? This alias, or AKA, type communication problem was resolved

when the scientific community abandoned all of the convential

medical

aliases and identified the disease simply as Syndrome X. It is

called

a syndrome because it has such a huge number of symptoms. The symptom

set

includes all of the listed diseases on our home page and many more as

well.

The basic underlying disorder, Syndrome X, is a derangement of

the

Blood Sugar Control System by poisonous fats and oils. It is

exacerbated

and complicated by the near universal lack of other essential nutrition

that the body needs to cope with the metabolic consequences of these

poisons.

Elevated Cholesterol levels, high Triglyceride

levels,

Hypertension (High Blood Pressure), inability to metabolize fats and

oils,

all of the symptoms listed on this home page as well as the well known

inability to metabolize Carbohydrates are all symptomatic of this

disease.

According to the American Heart Association, almost 50% of Americans

suffer

from one or more of these symptoms. We discuss this from a different

perspective

on our Hyperinsulinemia

page.

When I discovered that this disease appeared quite

suddenly

in the early 1930's, I wanted to know what else had happened then that

might be studied as a causal agent for the disease. It turns out there

is a causal agent that originated during the 1920's and which modern

biochemists

have now connected to the extraordinary disease epidemic in which we

are

involved. This causal agent is the systematic corruption and

commercialization

of our food supply starting with our fats and oils.

As early as 1901, efforts had been made to

manufacture

and sell food products by the use of automated factory machinery

because

of the immense potential profits that were possible. Most of the early

efforts failed because people were inherently suspicious of food that

wasn't

farm fresh and because the technology was poor. Safeway, for example,

was

reputed to have chosen its name as an assurance to its customers that

it

would not sell adulterated food. As long as people were prosperous,

"suspicious

food products" made little headway. Crisco, the artificial shortening,

was given away free in 2 1/2 lb cans in an unsucessful effort to

influence

the wives of the nation to trust and buy the product in preference to

lard.

 

Margarine was introduced and bitterly opposed by the

dairy

states. With the advent of the depression, Margarine, Crisco and a host

of other Refined and Hydrogenated products began to make significant

penetration

into the food markets of the nation. Support for dairy opposition to

Margarine

faded during WW II because there wasn't enough butter for the civilian

population and the needs of the military. At this point, the dairy

industry

having lost much support, simply accepted a diluted market share and

concentrated

on supplying the military. Flax oils and fish oils, which were common

in

the stores and considered a dietary staple before our nation became

diseased,

disappeared from the shelf; the last supplier of flax oil to the major

distribution chains was Archer Dainiels Midland and they discontinued

the

product in 1950.

The history of the adulteration of our once clean

food

supply exactly parallels the rise of the epidemic Hyperinsulinemia that

now lies at the root of many, if not most, of the degenerative diseases

from which we suffer.

On our Hyperinsulinemia page

we discuss much more about the nature of this disease, including

effective

ways to reverse its progress. More information is

available in our Special Report in hardcopy form about the

relationship

of artificial fats and oils to this disease. Our Special Report

also provides additional detail on the food factors that we must guard

against and the best way to recognise the food products that cause this

disease.

References:

 

Allen FM, M.D."Diabetes Mellitus.", Encyclopedia Americana,

International Edition 1966 Vol 9 54-56

Brown JAC, M.B., B.Chir.,"Pears Medical Encyclopedia,

Illustrated",

London, England., Rainbird Reference Books Ltd. 1971

Erasmus U, "Fats that heal, Fats that kill.", Burnaby, BC Canada.

Alive Books, 1996

Van Nostrands Scientific Encyclopedia, 8th Ed.

Trager J, "The Food Chronology", Henry Holt & Company.

NY, NY. 1995

 

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