Stephanie Herseth Sandlin: “I rise today to ask the Congress to help a young friend of mine, Anna Kate Gunn. I am also asking the Congress to help…”

“I rise today to ask the Congress to help a young friend of mine, Anna Kate Gunn. I am also asking the Congress to help over 1 million other young children in this country who, like Anna Kate, suffer from the disease of juvenile diabetes. I hold in my hand a book of children from all over this country, all races, all creeds, all colors, all languages, faces of hope, faces that are looking to us to try to do the right thing, faces of other children with juvenile diabetes. Our country is too strong, it is too great, it is too powerful, and it is too rich not to help our children by stopping juvenile diabetes in its tracks right now. Mr. Speaker, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation just concluded its 2001 Children's Congress here in Washington. This year, 200 delegates representing all 50 States gathered to meet with policymakers to ask our support as we make decisions about legislation that will impact funding for diabetes research. Diabetes is a chronic debilitating disease that affects every organ system in the body. Type 1 diabetes or juvenile diabetes lasts a lifetime. Those who are stricken with this disease must take insulin just to live. However, insulin does not cure diabetes or prevent the possibility of its eventual devastating affects. Those affects include kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, amputation, heart attack, stroke. More than 1 million Americans have juvenile diabetes.”