Ending diabetes stigma is a part of fat politics

If you are still making diabetes jokes about sweets or calling soda "diabetes in a glass" or blaming people with diabetes for the cost of all health care going up

You have bad politics
And you need to fix that

Here is a teeny tiny 101 explainer on the most frequent push back for destigmatizing diabetes--

And let's be real here, most people are being total assholes about type 2 mostly, because it's the "fat" kind

1) Being fat gives you diabetes so it's your own fault
-Thin people also get type 2 and not all fat people do.

2) Eating sugar gives you diabetes
-No, this is just flat out wrong

3) More people have diabetes than they used to
-Ehhhhh. Maybe.

There is a point in the past beyond which we don't have any real data and where different types of diabetes were not differentiated.

The introduction of insulin and the improvements in it and in different kinds of testing of blood sugar mean that people who have diabetes live longer now.

They remain in the population of people who have diabetes, so as more people are dx-ed, the total number goes up

That's not a bad thing?
That's actually a really good thing.

Also, as acute diseases like cholera and typhoid fever and smallpox were mostly solved for by medical science, the number of people living long enough to GET a chronic illness associated with age (type 2)

Also goes up

The lengthening of lifespans in the 20th century due to the adoption of germ theory and the discovery of antibiotics and the introduction of sanitary waste disposal

Is like pretty fucking unprecedented?

And I thought we all agreed... Was good?

But a population that contains many more older people is going to be a population that shows more age related illnesses

So... Like maybe there is more type 2... But compared to what exactly?

When people were dying at old age at 40 on the regular?

4) It's expensive to treat diabetes so therefore...

So therefore WHAT exactly?
For one damn thing, insulin does NOT have to cost as much as it does, we don't have to LET it cost that much

None of this has to cost as much as it does!
That's some capitalist bullshit

Additionally!

We only calculate the "cost" of the health care of people we don't like

No one goes around talking about how much it costs to have people get sports injuries.

Because we like sports.
So it's fine.

So pay attention to THAT.

We are finding out right NOW how much it costs to treat people like they are disposable

How much it COSTS to live in a society where we are proud of how much we don't care about each other.

And it costs a whole hell of a lot more than just money, which is fucking made up anyway

This scarcity mentality is FAKE

Health care is not gold, we can just make as much of it as we need.

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