Why do people get diabetes? People get diabetes because they’re fat. They get diabetes because they don’t exercise. They get it because they’re lazy and they lack discipline in controlling their appetites. They get diabetes because they’re out of shape slobs. People get diabetes because they deserve it.
Most people won’t say this to your face, but that doesn’t mean they’re not thinking it. The extent to which people believe that diabetes is the fault of the diabetic became very apparent, recently, after a finger pointing exchange about blame for the condition by two celebrity chefs. And what that reveals is an underlying societal discrimination of diabetics that could cost people their lives.
In January celebrity chef Paula Deen revealed she had type 2 diabetes. The creator of a hamburger featuring doughnuts in place of a bun was met with a backlash of blame. She was drawn into a kafuffle with fellow celeb chef Anthony Bourdain when he said he thought it was in “bad taste” for Deen to be dishing high fat Southern cuisine while she had diabetes and had not told the public about her condition. The implication was that Deen’s recipe for loaded mashed potatoes was the food equivalent of a loaded gun because, clearly, eating such rich foods leads inevitably to diabetes.
“People out there with diabetes haven’t chosen this,” Deen said in response to Bourdain’s comment. “It’s not their fault. So many things play into whether or not you get diabetes. I thought [what Bourdain said] was very, very cruel.” (prevention.com)
And that’s when it got ugly. That was when people stepped up and, from behind their anonymous postings on blogs and Internet sites, laid the blame where they believe the blame belongs.
“Look people, there are consequences for what you put in your body,” an anonymous poster wrote on thestir.com in response to an article about Deen and how much responsibility she should shoulder for her condition. “This isn’t some autoimmune disease. It won’t ‘just happen no matter what you do.” If you are taking dietary and/or health advice from a woman who ate herself into obesity, you deserve what you get.”
There’s that word: deserve. The “they deserve it” argument isn’t new to healthcare. People who smoke cigarettes deserve to get lung cancer. Gay men who engage in unprotected sex deserve to get AIDS. Overweight people deserve to suffer heart attacks. The “they deserve it” argument, however, is more than just an opinion about Old Testament retribution for lifestyle choices.
In the cases of AIDS, lung cancer, and heart disease, more people died and got sick than otherwise might have because the idea that they deserved to be sick was accepted on a mass scale. That institutionalized belief in blame restricted funding, which hampered research, which, in turn, cost lives.
As an example, President Ronald Reagan spoke about AIDS for the first time in 1987, more than six years after the virus was first identified. Between 1981 and 1987 almost 60,000 people had acquired the virus, and almost 28,000 had died. If Reagan had made a speech about the need for AIDS research and treatment in 1982, how many people’s lives may have been significantly extended through research into creating more effective medications?
With diabetes, we’re in 1981. Paula Deen helps provide another example of how thoroughly accepted it is to casually blame diabetics for their diabetes. When Deen was poised to reveal she had diabetes, ABC News previewed her announcement in a story called: “Paula Deen to Confess She Has Type 2 Diabetes.”
Confess? Don’t people typically “confess” to something they’re guilty of, something they’re to blame for?
While it might seem silly to think the name of an ABC News story is a cultural bellwether, it’s not once you look at some numbers that are representative of overall research spending. In 2006, according to the New York Times, the United States government spent ten times more, per patient, researching cancer than researching diabetes. This despite the fact that the number of people with diabetes is on the rise, while the number of cancer patients is falling.
One way to explain that disparity is that most people simply don’t believe diabetics deserve more investment in a cure. After all, they’re already getting what they deserve.
For more from Alex O’Meara see his essay Curing Diabetes: Would I Do It Again?
I’ve found my fatness compounds this phenomenon. My body is visibly off kilter, a symbol for lethargy, lack of self-regulation, ill health, indolence. Combine this with the misbelief that there is a cure for diabetes — that cure being willpower — and everyone is suddenly an expert on how to fix me. It’d be impossible not to internalize that I am to blame. There is the issue of my blackness, too, which many, because of unconscious bias, interpret as inherently lazy, deviant, sick, unclean. I’ve always known my body needed transforming — or that other people thought it did. I… Read more »
I strongly disagree with the statement “People get diabetes because they are fat, lazy slobs.” This is an ignorant statement. All diabetics are not fat or lazy. My husband has been a diabetic almost 30 years. His father, sister and brother were all diabetics. All of them were slim people, never fat. Many of his first cousins are diabetics. It seems to run in their family. I resent people making such discriminatory statements.
As a person with type one diabetes I believe that its no ones fault its just the way your body works and people with type one are not fat at all.
“This isn’t some autoimmune disease. It won’t ‘just happen no matter what you do.”
Ummm, actually look up LADA. There IS autoimmune diabetes. Idiot.
I’m 380lbs I drink more than 5 cans of soda daily and never go outside for any reason. I eat junk food more than anything else. I’m in my thirties. I’ve lived this lifestyle since I was born. I’m nowhere close to having diabetes and that makes me suspicious. If what everyone says is true how can a kid have diabetes but I can live all the way up to my adult life without a hint of problems.
Hi all I have type 2. This email I send out to all those ignorant people out there who play the blame game and do not know the facts. I am a 33 year old man who also has arthritis problems’ and I have Epilepsy on top. Throughout my teens and 20s I was a very active person on a very healthy non fat or sugar diet. I have won many sporting awards, comps, tournaments and have represented at state and international level. at one stage between 19 – 25 I never had take away, touch booze or drank coffee or… Read more »
Of course no one deserves diabetes. It would be awful form to wish that upon another. That said, living an unhealthy lifestyle with little exercise and lots of sugary foods is inviting diabetes into your body. There is no way to protect yourself 100 percent no matter how healthy you live, but I find it hard to sympathize with overweight people and the bevy of health problems that leaves them at risk for. Go for walks, see a dietician. You will live better, and hopefully longer.
I have had diabetes since I was 9 years old. I’m now 27 years old. When my family and I found out we were told that I didn’t do anything wrong to get it.
“Just another”, you are not right that Type 2 has nothing to do with Type 1. As my top notch endocrinologist has put it, in a Type 1, the pancreas doesn’t make insulin. In a Type 2, the pancreas often makes too little insulin. In addition, many Type 2 diabetics are insulin resistant, which means that no matter how much insulin there is, the body’s cells are not receptive. That means the cells do not get energy and blood sugar builds up in our system. My endocrinologist is a more recent graduate and up on all the latest research and… Read more »
you people are very wrong, type 2 diabetes does not mean that you are fat and heavy all the time, that is not true. I and my 3 brothers are good examples. We are not fat, 2 of us barely over average and 2 of us average and eat most healthy average foods, no alcohol or junk food, you want to try to explain that. I say that the body is just not functioning the right way and the pancreas insulin system needs adjustments and the medical field is not doing much to repair the issue medically except the fact… Read more »
As a Type 1, my feeling is that there really isn’t much benefit to combining the two, very different diseases, as one. Paula Deen’s disease has nothing to do with mine. They have 2 different causes, mainly 2 different paths of treatment and even though the ADA combines the two as one for fund raising purposes, neither has a cure. Both are able to be turned down for coverage by insurance companies. Both illicit unwelcome comments from the ignorant general population. The only difference I see is that Type 2s have more avenues of treatment than Type 1s. I will… Read more »