Originally published February 21 2006
Diabetes epidemic spells big bucks for drug sellers
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
For the Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson examines how diabetes patients are becoming the valued clients of drugstores, which are enjoying a sales growth while America continues its plunge into a diabetes epidemic.
This grim world of amputations, blindness, heart disease and kidney failure, once assumed to be confined to those with wrinkles, has descended into the tender world.
We have created this monster by allowing trash food marketers to prey on our children and by letting our children disappear into video screens.
The number of Americans with type-2 diabetes, the kind that can be controlled by exercise and eating right, has exploded from 5.8 million in 1980 to 18.2 million today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An American child born in 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of contracting diabetes in his lifetime.
The CDC estimates that diabetes costs the United States $92 billion in medical costs and $40 billion in indirect costs, such as restricted or lost worker productivity.
In one of its 2005 reports, the marketing information firm IRI said that sufferers of diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol are ''ideal targets for retailer and manufacturer programs aimed at driving sales growth.
Many ailments such as diabetes and high cholesterol are regularly treated with prescription medication.
For retailers and manufacturers, this translates to frequent shopping trips and thus, countless opportunities to build relationships and drive non-prescription behavior."
In the case of diabetics, the ''relationship" would be built around low-sugar, low-carbohydrate and low-fat foods and beverages.
It also means that the expanding racks for diabetes management supplies, such as insulin, syringes and blood sugar meters also mean more customers who buy other items in the stores.
''This is a hotly competitive area for retailers," Kerrylyn Whalen Rodriguez, a diabetes specialist for ShopKo's pharmacies, told the trade publication Retail Merchandiser.
The oversexed marketing and perfect bodies thrown at youth in the name of fashion will become a mockery as the young grow old before the age of 50, with brittle nails, callouses, over-sensitive skin, balding scalps, punctured bodies and of course, lost limbs.
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