2008-11-19 - Update - New estimates, shared with the AP from a study funded by a Danish pharmaceutical company, calculate the current cost of diabetes, combining direct and indirect costs, to be about $218 Billion!

Recent news that diabetes rates have doubled over the past 10 years, coupled with the fact that spending on drugs for diabetes has doubled in the past 6 years to a total of $12.5 Billion US Dollars had Drug Companies and their investors jumping for joy.

"We've never had it so good. Soon we'll be earning as much as those oily oil overlords."

"Our surreptitious collaborations with the food moguls have really worked out well. They've put refined sugar (sucrose) and refined flour (non-whole grains) in many food products. I'm glad we could muscle them from making public their 'Subsidized by Sugar' campaign.

"You can barely buy anything in the supermarket that doesn't have a bunch of sugar in it! We even try to trick those health nuts by putting a fancy name on the sugar like 'organic sugar,' 'raw sugar,' 'sucrose,' or some other nonsense to trick their puny brains.

"In fact the food companies have been so successful in turning the world upside down that significantly less processed foods now cost MORE!

"A bag of whole wheat flour costs more than a bag of refined white flour.

"A bottle of spaghetti sauce without sugar costs much more than a bottle of spaghetti sauce with sugar.

"Peanut butter that's just a bunch of ground up nuts and salt costs a lot more than peanut butter with sugar added to it.

"The list goes on..."

"Now if we can only gain control of the Humongous Management-only Organizations (HMOs), we'll be set, our conflict of interest will be complete."