Me and my 48 million best friends
Revising estimates it made only three years ago, the Centers for Disease Control now predicts that 48.3 million Americans will have diabetes by the year 2050. That’s triple the number of people who have diabetes today and 9.3 million more than the CDC’s 2003 forecast.
“The numbers are very worrying,” says Dr. K.M. Venkat Narayan, former chief of the CDC’s diabetes epidemiology and statistics branch. “There is an epidemic going on that — if left unchecked — will have a huge effect on the U.S. population and on health care costs.”
The new CDC figures appear in September’s issue of Diabetes Care
Minorities stand to suffer the most. The CDC’s projections predict an increase in diabetes by 481% among Hispanics, 208% among blacks, and 113% among whites. Predictably, the bulk of the increase is due to poor living choices and an obesity epidemic.
The worst part of this for me? If EVERYONE gets diabetes, it’s not going to be cool anymore. Those of us who already have it don’t want to lose our street cred just because the rest of you can’t think of something original to get on your own. We’re old skool, baby.
(via WebMD)
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POSTED IN: Research
1 opinion for Me and my 48 million best friends
Susan
Sep 13, 2006 at 3:10 am
Yeah, but you’re gonna be a cool published author, so you don’t have to be defined by your “cool” diseases any more, right? But what about the rest of us, Rob?! This is all we have to make us cool! Oh, wait, I also have my groovy inhaler…
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