November is National Diabetes Awareness Month, which gives us the opportunity to reflect on the difficulties and heartbreak that diabetes has caused for so many American families as they await a cure.
As the founder and co-chair of the Senate Diabetes Caucus, I have learned a great deal about this costly and devastating disease. Nearly 24 million American children and adults – including 77,000 in Maine – have diabetes. Another 57 million Americans are at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, and, if current trends continue, one out of every three American children born since 2000 will develop the disease at some point during their lifetime.
Diabetes is a condition that affects people of every age, race and nationality. It is the leading cause of kidney failure, blindness in adults, and amputations not related to injury. Diabetes imposes an enormous personal toll on individuals and families. Moreover, it places a tremendous economic burden on our country, costing more than $174 billion annually and accounting for one out of every four Medicare dollars.
The burden of diabetes is particularly heavy for children and young adults with Type 1, or juvenile diabetes. They not only have the disease from an early age, but they also must endure a lifetime of treatment and related physical and psychological complications. The average child with Type 1 diabetes will have to take 50,000 insulin shots in a lifetime. Morever, these children and adults must closely monitor their blood sugar levels throughout their lives with frequent testing. Diabetes is a disease they will never outgrow.
There is, however, some good news for people with diabetes. Since I founded the Senate Diabetes Caucus, funding for diabetes research at the National Institutes of Health has more than tripled from $319 million in 1997 to more than a billion last year. After a decade of investment, the Special Diabetes Program – which funds federal Type 1 diabetes research, as well as Type 2 diabetes education and treatment for Native Americans – is making tangible improvements in the lives of Americans who are living with diabetes. It is also making significant progress toward a cure. Private organizations like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the American Diabetes Association are also doing their part to fund research, support patients and families, and spur the government on to do even more. As a consequence, we have seen some encouraging breakthroughs and the development of better treatments. We are on the threshold of a number of important new discoveries that may ultimately lead to cure.
For example, a new drug has been shown in clinical trials to stabilize or reverse the progression of Type 1 diabetes, demonstrating for the first time that the clinical course of the disease can be altered. Advances in technology, like continuous glucose sensors, are helping patients better control their blood glucose levels, which is key to preventing diabetes complications. These advances are also moving us closer to our long-term goal of an artificial pancreas, which could revolutionize diabetes care and help to prevent such serious and costly complications as kidney failure, heart attacks and amputations. And drugs originally designed for cancer therapy are showing tremendous potential for treating diabetic eye disease, the leading cause of blindness in working-age adults.
Congress recently extended funding for the Special Diabetes Program through 2010. While this is good news, this is no time to take our foot off the accelerator. We have two choices. We can sit back and continue to pay the bills and endure the suffering, or we can aggressively pursue a national strategy aimed at curing this terrible disease. As we look forward to the new year, we must step up our commitment to finding better treatments, a means of prevention, and ultimately a cure for diabetes.