For Richard McCormack of Jersey City, diabetes as the fastest growing disease in America is more than a statistic.
He has suffered from the disease since 1972, making his life a roller coaster ride of elevated blood sugar he constantly has to monitor.
Worse, too, is the fact that his father suffered from the same disease, and some of McCormack’s earliest memories are filled with visions of his father’s battle using glass syringes and boiling down the formula necessary to keep him alive.
Advances in medicine have made McCormack’s life easier in that regard, although for a long time, his daily life was made up of pin pricks for blood samples that would tell him how his sugar levels were doing and measured meals to help keep the levels stable.
Lately, technology has allowed him to carry around a small computer in what is called an insulin pump, which when inserted under his skin automatically tells him what his blood sugar level is and shoots him with insulin when necessary.
But technological improvements do not make up for the basic fact that diabetes still has no cure, and while science provides better ways to keep tabs on his condition, money is needed for research that will help put a stop to what has become the fastest growing disease in America.
For this reason, McCormack has become an activist, representing Hudson County in several jaunts to Washington, D.C. since 1998 to raise awareness among legislators for the need to increase funding for diabetes research in the national budget.
For three days in June McCormack represented Hudson County in this effort, as a member of the American Diabetes Association’s “Call to Congress.”
“There were about six of us from around New Jersey,” he said. “We last went two years ago. Like then, we made the rounds of our legislators.”
This included visiting the offices of U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, and members of the House of Representatives.
“Since we did not have a representative from the 13th Congressional District, I went to the offices of [Representatives] Steve Rothman and Donald Payne.”
While McCormack’s delegation did not get to actually meet with any public officials, they got to talk with staff members, telling them of their concerns, and in some cases, eliciting promises that the legislators would get the message.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a disease in which the blood has too much glucose, coming from food, muscle and the liver. In a normal system, cells feed on the sugar by using insulin manufactured in the pancreas. When the pancreas fails to produce enough insulin, the glucose remains in the blood.
Type I diabetes – which usually affects children – is a result of the body’s immune system attacking the insulin, forcing a person to take insulin shots or use an insulin pump.
Type II diabetes most often hits adults when the pancreas fails to make enough insulin or the body does not use it properly. This sometimes is a result of being overweight, and often can be controlled by diet, various medications and exercise.
Federal officials, of course, have a lot of issues to contemplate, but statistics on diabetes growth are staggering,
The American Diabetes Association said 20.8 million people in the United States, or 7 percent of the population, have diabetes. Of this estimated number, 6.2 million apparently do not know it. In New Jersey, 400,000 people are believed to have diabetes of one form or another. In fact, New Jersey has the second highest incidence of End Stage Renal Disease (DSRD) in the nation – a major complication of diabetes.
Based on death certificate data, diabetes contributed to 224,092 deaths in 2002, although the yearly estimate may be as much as 40 percent higher.
Studies indicate that diabetes goes generally underreported on death certificates, particularly in the cases of older persons with multiples chronic conditions such as heart disease and hypertension.
The economic impact is equally staggering with $132 billion, or one out of every 10, health care dollars spent in the United States in 2002.
Not as effective as they wanted to be
“We were trying to get Congress to allocate $20.8 million, one dollar for every known diabetic in America,” McCormack said, wearing a button that said “Am I worth a dollar?”
McCormack and other activists were looking for the money to get added to the National Institute of Health and earmarked for the Diabetes Foundation.
“They only allocated $5.8 million,” McCormack said. “While that was $15 million short of what we looked for, we believe our visit had some impact.”
McCormack said costs related to diabetes go up every year, from the supplies needed to treatment and insurance costs, making it beneficial to future government budgets to find a cure as soon as possible.
“We were not as effective as we wanted to be, but we made a point,” he said, hoping also that this trip motivated politicians to support stem cell research legislation – which is seen as a likely area for finding a cure.
The stem cell research bill is currently being battled over, with a significant number of legislators in both political parties supporting it.
“But since President George W. Bush has promised to veto the bill if Congress passed it, I don’t know if we will see federal investment in stem cell research this year,” McCormack said.
Al Sullivan can be contacted at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com