Insulin

To give the authors of "Eat this steak!" (Op-ed Feb. 5) due credit, they got one thing quite right - the federal Food Guide Pyramid heavily suffers from industry taint and poorly serves the public-health interest. However, quite contrary to Michael and Mary Dan Eades' assertions of grain bias, it's the politically well-connected dairy, meat and egg industries whose clout dominates and skewers the 9-year-old Food Pyramid. For starters, its release was delayed one year until April 1992, and its contents diluted, under intense pressure from animal agribusiness interests.

Four more people with diabetes have joined a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the Philadelphia Police Department, contending that, within the last year, they were denied insulin or treatment after being taken into custody. "We're concerned that this number of people with serious failures to treat have come forward after just one or two newspaper articles," said Alan L. Yatvin, a Center City civil-rights lawyer who filed the proposed class-action suit last month on behalf of Stephen Rosen and other diabetics.

A Philadelphia cabaret owner who has diabetes sued the city in federal court yesterday, contending he was brought "close to death" last year when police, arresting him on a liquor-code violation, locked him in a holding cell for almost 24 hours and denied him access to insulin and blood-pressure medicine. The civil-rights suit filed by Stephen Rosen, 48, says his is the fourth claim filed against the city since 1997 over police treatment of diabetics in custody, despite a 1982 agreement in which the city settled a suit by the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and promised to implement police training about identifying and handling diabetic emergencies.

Some people will buy candy or wrapping paper to support a good cause. Others will participate in runs and walks. Tomorrow, more than two dozen people will go a bit further. They will brave jumping out of an airplane to help pay $8,000 for an insulin pump and related medical supplies for an 11-year-old Glen Mills boy. All of them, said Cathy Benson, the boy's mother, are "virgin jumpers. " None has ever skydived. The jumpers - 27 have signed up so far - will pay $175 each to take the plunge after taking off from the Laurel (Del.

Annie Greenspun's first thought after learning she had diabetes in August 1998 wasn't about life or death, or even about the way her daily routine was about to change. Her first thought, as she sat in the Bryn Mawr Hospital emergency room, was about a soccer tournament. "About a week and a half later, I was supposed to go to Detroit for the Maccabi Games," Greenspun said. "That's what I was focused on. I really wanted to play. " She did. Having diabetes didn't stop the Haverford High junior then, and it hasn't stopped her now. "That's what got her out of the hospital," said her father, Eric.

Glancing at Charlotte, a 250-pound Swedish pot-bellied pig, "Hammlet" mused: "To kiss or not to kiss, that is the question. " It wasn't quite Shakespeare. But Hammlet, a.k.a. Dr. Bruce Stark, wasn't dressed in a black suit, frilly collar and pig snout to pay homage to the Bard. He was out to promote diabetes awareness. "This is to educate the public that diabetes is a dangerous disease," Stark said at Brandywine Picnic Park at yesterday's start to the inaugural KISS-A-PIG fund drive.

With a mighty force, Bob Scheidt stabbed his walking cane into the Atlantic Ocean. The dream he held as a boy, even before he became an insulin-dependent diabetic at age 17, finally came true yesterday. Scheidt, 44, was oblivious of the waves soaking his well-worn sneakers - his 18th pair since he left Seattle in June 1997 for the 3,400-mile cross-country walk against diabetes. He took off his shirt, detached the palm-sized pump that feeds him insulin 24 hours a day, and peeled off the green waist pouch containing emergency sweets and blood-sugar testing strips.

A type of diabetes usually found in overweight people over 45 has been growing at an alarming rate among children. Doctors blame this "emerging epidemic" of Type 2 diabetes on bad eating habits and inactivity in a nation where a fifth of children are obese. The trend, they say, portends major public health problems as these children face the consequences of diabetes - blindness, kidney failure, limb amputations, heart disease and stroke - as early as young adulthood. "At the age of 35 or 40, you're going to have people whose bodies are falling apart," said Dr. Gerald Bernstein, a diabetes expert with the Beth Israel Health Care System in New York and president of the American Diabetes Association.

Here she comes, Miss America Nicole Johnson, wearing a charcoal-gray MiniMed 507C on her belt. Or discreetly tucked in the middle of her bra. Or other places. "During the pageant, I wore it on the inside of my thigh," the 24-year-old brunette confided in an interview last week. "I told the judges my worst fear was that this pump would slip down my leg. " We're talking insulin pumps, of course. The coronation last month of Johnson, a.k.a. Miss Virginia, has thrown a spotlight on diabetes.

The new Miss America posed for photographers late yesterday morning holding her dazzling crown in one hand and her insulin pump in the other. Nicole Johnson is one of the 16 million people with diabetes. She was diagnosed with the less common form called Type I, or juvenile, diabetes as a 19-year-old college sophomore after seeking medical treatment for what she thought were flu symptoms. The 24-year-old native of Seminole, Fla., said she had been wearing the pump for the last 14 months, and that it has helped her regain control of her life.