I Did Not Attend The Roche Media Summit

I wish I had been able to attend, but some things just weren't meant to happen. Did I lose out? Maybe. I was fortunate to have a visit from an army friend of many years ago. We had reconnected about 12 months ago now and we spent two afternoons enjoying each others company. He is nearing retirement now as an endocrinologist and has been following my blogs the entire time.

We talked about our past and then about diabetes – I think we spent too much time on diabetes and blogging, but he was most interested in my research since I am not medically trained. We have a lot in common on many of the topics I write about and I think he was very kind about my understanding of some medical topics. I do draw on his knowledge about some topics and he has asked me to research some topics for him.

He supplies me with a few topics (URLs) and answers questions I may have. It was my blog on non-diabetic hypoglycemia that reconnected us after about 35 years. I am just happy that he found my research useful and the blog got us back together.

Now to the reports to-date from the Roche summit. I enjoyed David Mendosa's and Gretchen Becker's reports on Dr. Polonsky's speech to the group. This is one where I would have liked to have been in attendance. I have followed the Behavioral Diabetes Institute newletters for well over a year now and wish they had branches in one or two Midwestern cities as this could be very helpful for many with diabetes and depression.

I just hope that the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) will not look too unfavorably on the actions of a few who felt it necessary to “ambush” their representative, Isabella Platon. The IDF is doing a lot of good, and after all folks, this organization speaks for the majority of the world's population with diabetes. Yes, the IDF needs to be more active in the USA as it just might be able to do more for the PWD than the ADA which is governed by its advertising and doctor members and does not have the best interest in the patients.

At least there were some in the DOC that spoke with interest about the mission of the IDF and what they are working so hard to accomplish in the underdeveloped countries of the our world. At least they could remember the names, including the IDF President, Jean Claude Mbanya which one blogger chose to dismiss in an offhand manner.

I can see the support for JDRF as that is the organization dear to the majority of those in attendance, so it is right to be supportive of that organization. I would not expect anything less.

An Example of Poor Research

This article started it all as people were asking Jenny Ruhl about it. Her response is here.

Then to make matters worse, many people were posting about this on many diabetes forums and some were actually thinking this might be an answer. It now appears some clearer heads have prevailed on several diabetes forums.

This also fits Gretchen Becker's blog about press spin as this is a ploy to find funding for what I agree is a very dangerous attempt to give people hope.

Here are two more articles - one from BBC Health. Another one is by WebMD from the presentation at ADA so we know this is not peer reviewed and is just a hope of a very few people. Even CBS News dot com had to use the information.

I agree with Jenny that this is not good science and badly flawed. On Monday, I expect to see more articles on this.  Only one more article and not all that jazzed up about this.

As of this time, people may have become smarter and realized how poor this is and not published anything after WebMD gave it a big splash. Refer to my blog here as to some of the reasons behind our determining this is such poor research in addition to what Jenny writes.