On the recordNovember 30, 2010
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms. DeGette, for your leadership on this issue. Mr. Speaker, I sympathize with the new Member from New York. He and Ms. DeGette and I have something in common. We all have children who suffer from type 1 diabetes. Although it is a family tragedy when it happens--and we all have those stark memories of being told that your child is going to be for the rest of his or her life dependent upon insulin--and although it is life changing, it transcends. The issue of diabetes transcends the personal tragedy that it inflicts on millions of families, and we have heard the numbers by some of my colleagues today. The ADA, the American Diabetes Association, estimates now that north of $200 billion a year is spent on diabetes in this country. That's 'billion' with a 'B.' Those are warlike numbers. The real tragedy is we could avoid that. If we had any kind of foresight envisioned as a Nation, we would invest in a cure. For a fraction of what we spend in this country on diabetes every year, we could cure the disease. It's within reach. This isn't cancer or some complicated disease of the brain. This is an autoimmune disorder that affects the pancreas. We already have the technology for the artificial pancreas. With a very small fraction of what we spend on diabetes every year, we could give every type 1 diabetic in America a closed-loop system--an insulin pump and a glucose monitor--that, through technology, works like a pancreas.
