Subject: Letters to the Editor:  Putting AIDS Crisis Into Perspective
Date: Published: 9/23/88 41 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Letters to the Editor:  
    Putting AIDS Crisis
    Into Perspective

    In your Sept. 2 page-one article "Living With AIDS," it
 was stated that patients hope their AIDS will become "a
 manageable disease like diabetes."  A manageable disease?  Yes.
 But like diabetes?  What a bad fate that would be!
    One of our employees died recently at age 31 of diabetes.
 His diabetes produced kidney disease and ultimately heart
 failure.  My friend's daughter had diabetes, became blind and
 died at age 23.
    Each year in America, 30,000 people will die prematurely
 from diabetes itself.  Another quarter-million die annually
 from the complications of diabetes -- often after the disease
 has caused amputations or blindness.  Diabetes strikes rich
 and poor, young and old.  It causes pain, suffering, increased
 hospitalizations and premature death, at an annual total cost
 of more than $20 billion in the U. S. 
    Contributions to and programs of the American Diabetes
 Association have increased in this decade at a rate about
 twice as fast as other major health causes during the 1980s
 due to the severity of the disease.  Our research results are
 starting to show major promise.  In the coming few years,
 pancreas transplants, alternatives to insulin injections, new
 medications and widespread patient-education changes should
 achieve for people with diabetes the same thing we wish for
 people with AIDS -- prevention, cure and improved lives.
    Robert S. Bolan
    Executive Vice President
    American Diabetes Association
    Alexandria, Va.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]