Why I’m not signing the petition

I just got a heart-felt letter from Jamie Perez, one of two moms of kiddos with type 1 diabetes who are leading the fight to change the name of our disease. These two ladies are hardly the first to argue that the sister diseases of type 1 and type 2 diabetes are poorly named, but they are the first to successfully launch a grass-roots effort to try to actually do something about it. They’ve collected over 3,000 signatures on an online petition to the American Diabetes Association, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Diabetes Federation; and in the process have ignited a wildfire of passion and controversy.

This is not the type of situation I’m known for shying away from.

Their motivation, to quote from the petition, is that their sons are “subjected on a daily basis to ignorance and misconceptions.” They note, correctly, that the mainstream media frequently gets the two types of diabetes muddled. This dynamic duo believes that if the names of diabetes were revised to “more accurately reflect the nature of each disease,” it would “alleviate the confusion.” They think this would be to the advantage of type 1s and type 2s alike.

Jamie was writing to me to ask for my support in this effort. Oh, and not only did she write beautifully and passionately, but she made matters worse by telling me what a big fan she is of my writing—and as everyone knows, I’m a huge sucker for a compliment.

So it was with no small amount of guilt that I had to write her back, thank for her compliments, salute her for her passion, but to respectfully pass on joining her in this fight.

I’m not going to sign.

And I have four reasons why I’m not going to sign. Now, I’ve known about this petition for a bit, and even wrote about it in a roundabout way for Diabetes Mine. I did the background research into the last several times the names of diabetes were changed. And while our coverage, which Jamie felt placed her efforts “in a negative light,” has generated a ton of comments—more than 100 as I’m writing this—I have not read even one of these yet. Nor have I read any of the detailed posts written by my fellow diabetes advocates; both for and against the effort. I will. Eventually. But I thought I’d better commit my thoughts to paper first. I’m sure I’ll find myself tugged back and forth by the passion and wordsmithing of the opposing sides.

But think about what I just said.

Opposing sides? Since when? Since when should there be sides? Aren’t we all in this together? Apparently not. And that’s the first reason I’m not signing.

First: Look at what this is doing to us. We are fighting among ourselves. It’s a fucking diabetes civil war. We have bigger and more important battles to fight. We should be using our energy to combat public ignorance, legislative ignorance, and media ignorance—not fighting each other. Also consider, my brother and sister type 1s: So you feel bad when some idiot mistakes you for a type 2 and thinks you gave yourself diabetes by eating too much? Maybe you’d better do a knowledge check. Type 2s don’t “give themselves diabetes” any more than you did. How do you think they feel when exposed to the same cruel ignorance? You type 1s who want to ignore part of our family had better look into your hearts, or at least into a good medical textbook. The flavors of diabetes overlap, blend, and mesh much more than most people realize. Hell, if you really want to rename it, the only thing that makes sense is to drop the type 1 and type 2 and just call it Diabetes. Or maybe Fucking Diabetes. That would be more accurate. And much more fun.

Second: Changing the name would not cure pubic ignorance. Neither would it educate the mainstream media.

Third: It most likely can’t be done anyway. The petition is going to the wrong outfits. Who says the ADA, NIH, and IDF could change the names of diabetes if they wanted to? Diabetes is global. If you want to change the name, you really need to talk to the World Health Organization. And if you think our politics are bad, we are all bush-league compared to what you see there! And if the WHO did agree, beyond the three organizations petitioned, they’d also need to get the following on board: the JDRF, the two big groups of endos, the AACE and the ACE, not to mention the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, the Australian Diabetes Society, and the prestigious Japan Diabetes Society. And what about professional diabetes organizations in India, China, and elsewhere? Even if the three petitionees had the power to make all the other organizations toe the line, let’s not forget that they can’t even agree on a symbol for diabetes at large! Can you imagine the fights, egos, politics, and turf battles involved in choosing the new names? Getting all these organizations to agree on anything would require the same kind of miracle that it would take to get the US congress to pass a law!

Fourth, and most importantly: If, in the unlikely event this effort were successful, I fear it would have an unintended consequence for us type 1s, and for the two children whose experiences started this. Piggybacked onto the pandemic that is type 2 diabetes, we type 1s have some clout. If we get re-named, re-branded, re-invented, we just become another oddball rare disease. One unworthy of awareness, research, protection of law, or money. We’d risk becoming a fringe disease that only those who have been touched by it have ever heard of.

Globally, compared to other diseases, by ourselves, we type 1s just aren’t all that important. On the other hand, being in the shadow of an epidemic that casts a long shadow on the economies and societies of nations is to our benefit.

A portable typewriter for the modern correspondent

Yes, she’s pretty and she can type. Or more correctly, I can type on her. That sweet little thing above is my “new” refurb’d Apple iPad mini with the ultrathin keyboard cover from Logitech. The cover, billed as the “the other half of your iPad mini,” is a folding iPad cover featuring a “real” keyboard, which dispenses with the touchscreen nonsense when it comes to writing something. Perversely, I view the iPad as the other half of my keyboard; instead of the keyboard being the other half of my iPad. Here’s the story…

A while back my laptop died. I couldn’t feel too bad about that, after all, it was one of the original laptops. It was actually the one Moses got from his dad. It was big enough and heavy enough that a lap-dancer could’ve done her act on it. As a matter of fact, that’s why I thought they called them laptops…

Anyway, as I have to carry so much crap around with me just to stay alive, I can’t abide heavy computers. Or thick computers. Actually, I can barely abide computers at all. But I have a job coming up that’s going to require some posting from the field (more about that in a minute) so I had to go computer shopping.

My requirements for a replacement laptop were: light, cheapish, light, thin, and light. Oh yes, and light. Now, a while back, I had a clinic-owned Sony Vaio “P,” but it’s since been retired. Frankly, I don’t miss it much. The screen was too high res. Even with my tri-focals I had a hard time reading it. And the keyboard was badly designed. It was too easy to bump the arrow keys and all the sudden find yourself typing in the middle of the previous paragraph. It was light enough and small enough, but it was already off my list—as a machine to write on it was no damn good. In fact, about the only thing it was good for was as a chick magnet. If you want to make new friends, just take a Sony Vaio “P” to a Starbucks… Actually come to think of it, it was more of a nerd magnet than strictly a chick magnet. If I were bisexual, I would have had it made totally with that computer in hand.

So after looking at netbooks online (no time to drive 150 miles roundtrip to the nearest BestBuy) and being underwhelmed, I remembered reading that Logitech was making a keyboard cover for the big iPad. I type most of my work on one of their better-than-sex Wave keyboards, so this company is pretty dear to my heart. I also vaguely knew there was a smaller iPad so I wondered….

Well one thing led to another and I ordered an iPad mini. And before you ask, I just got the wireless version. And I got the smallest memory. Hell, it’s just a typewriter, people. I don’t even have a second page of “aps” on it yet, and probably never will. Oh and I choose white over black because I’m a medical correspondent and all…

Speaking of white, I had a few white-knuckle moments during the four days waiting for the little white computer to arrive in a little white truck. Would the keyboard be too small? Would my fingers wander, or get tangled up in each other? Would the keys be nice and springy or mushy like rotten fruit? Shopping online can be so stressful. Shoes you should try on. Cameras you should hold in your hands before choosing. Keyboards you should type on. There are some things you should just buy in person, if you can make the time to do it.

But I’m happy to report that the ultrathin keyboard is like a well-designed studio apartment. Yeah, it’s cramped, but the space is well used. It’s a good typing machine. And truth be told, it’s only about half an inch narrower right-to-left than a desktop’s keyboard, and about the same top-to-bottom on the letter keys. Of course the number keys are preemies, but that doesn’t bother me much.

Oh, it’s blue tooth (better than blue something else). The charge on the keyboard is said to last three months. We’ll see. When it’s working as a cover, it snaps right onto the iPad with a long, thin hinged magnet. Rio has said at least five times, “But I thought magnets were bad for computers!” Yeah, me too, son.

Closing the cover turns the iPad off. Opening it turns it on. Pretty clever. When the keyboard needs to do its typing thing you pull the cover off and drop the iPod into a slot that holds it back at a “perfect” viewing angle.

It works pretty slick, but I keep reaching for a mouse, then looking for a track pad. What the fuck? Oh. Right. Touchscreen. Just leave a greasy fingerprint wherever you want the cursor to go. The outside of the keyboard is aluminum, and looks just like the back of the iPad itself minus the shiny metal apple that Eve just took the bite of knowledge of good-and-evil out of.

Folded up, the keyboard and iPad look like Star Trek meets African safari. Slick, modern, and tough. Oh. Right. And thin and light. :-)

Wow. How my life has changed over the last year, tech-wise. A rechargeable glucometer, a digital B&W camera, a touch-screen insulin pump, and now this: a portable typewriter I could carry in the pocket of a pair of cargo pants if I wanted to. On the one hand, it’s thrilling. On the other hand, we are all one good solar flare away from extinction. Unfuckingbeleivable.

Now, I’d never want to do all my work on this mini/ultrathin, but it’ll be a nice reporter’s tool when I’m out in the field. The keys are lively, and while pretty much flat on their tops, they have enough separation between them that my fingers don’t wander off on to the wrong keys causing me to type Zmpe od yjr yo,r gpt s;; hppf ,rm yp vp,r yp yjr sof pg yjr vpimytu/ when I intended to type something else altogether. I hate it when that happens.

What? The image on the screen of my new portable typewriter? Oh, that’s a picture of the Remington Streamliner. It’s one of the original “portable” typewriters, circa 1941. It tips the scales at 10 pounds 9 ounces. “Streamlined” it stands about 5 inches off the desk. My new baby weighs 1 pound 2 ounces. And talk about streamlined: Folded up and ready to carry, the iPad and its case/keyboard are only one-half inch thick. It’s about the size and weight of my orginal Kindle, and I can slip it into the back pocket of my Go-Bag—right now a Domke F 803 Satchel.

To complete the package, I picked up a copy of Apple’s Pages, a $9.99 word-processing “ap.” Compare that to the 150 clams a new copy of Word will set you back. I found the software simple and elegant to use, and I can email myself a copy of any document and it opens on my desktop PC as a writing industry standard Word file. Awesome.

Of course I did dither over whether or not to get the full-sized iPad. It would have given me a full-sized keyboard. But it would have been at the cost of 17 more ounces. That’s an extra pound + to carry. Plus it’s thicker. And bigger all the way around. More dinero, too, and no matter how hard I work I never seem to have enough of that.

And where am I going with my new typewriter? To Phoneix at the end of this month. I’m covering the 22nd Annual Scientific and Clinical Congress of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists for Diabetes Mine. I’m gonna use my new computer to write posts in the evenings from the Motel 6 at the end of the airport runway. I’ll also send updates for my editors to tweet (I always feel guilty when I get an email saying that someone is now following me on Twitter. I think, boy are they ever gonna be bored… I only “tweet” about once a month).

I might even take a whack at using the mini to take notes during the seminars. Out of years of habit I generally take notes in a small spiral-bound notebook. But the last big conference I was at, I was surrounded by the clacking of keys and I had the only pen in the room… and I had to wonder…

And who knows? Maybe I’ll also check and send email on it. And Skype home to see how the family is doing. And shop on eBay, and maybe even surf for porn.

Hah! Just try doing any of those things on a Remington portable typewriter!

In defense of the F-word (again)

When Rio was about three or four, his maternal grandmother came to me, and speaking in a hushed voice, with eyes as big as saucers, said, “Rio used the f-word today.”

Huh. Well, did he use it correctly? I asked.

She froze, mouth open, stunned at my response. Then she paused to think about it for a moment, clearly reliving the conversation in her mind. She nodded slowly, and said somewhat hesitantly, “Well, yes…”

OK then. As far as I was concerned, the case was closed. Raised in a world devoid of peers, Rio’s mind works much like an adult’s. And while his reading skills are behind the curve, his verbal skills are off the chart. His teachers tell me they are amazed at his vocabulary. They say it’s like having a conversation with a college graduate, not a fourth grader who flunked kindergarten.

Of course, this comes as no great surprise to me. We are a verbal family: living, working and playing in a sea of words. We love words, and everyone on my side of the family is a working wordsmith. Family get-togethers are like Scrabble, Password, Boggle, Hangman, and the New York Times crossword all rolled into one. Over dinner we banter, duel with words, twist them in circles, and deploy them in word-play jokes. It keeps our minds sharp and our hearts young.

And any good vocabulary needs to come armed with an equally good portfolio of profanity.

Now eleven, Rio has a pretty impressive profane vocabulary. He actually swears more judicially than I do, and more intelligently, too. I’m guilty of fucking swearing without fucking thinking about it some of the fucking time. My son, either with the world’s quickest mind, or instinctively, chooses the appropriate level of profanity demanded by the situation. He still uses the f-word, but rarely, and only when appropriate. And he’s also situationally aware, as well; he won’t say things in school that he might say at home. Smart kid.

And Rio and I aren’t the only ones. The world has changed. Do these words even count as profanity in 2013: ass, bastards, bitch, crap, jackass, and piss? Or consider how often you hear one of George Carlin’s once-shocking seven taboo words at the office or in Wal-Mart. In fact, I quite frequently hear all seven used at once at TSA airport screening points.

Now, my personal profanity portfolio includes the old standbys of the Anglo Saxons: damn, hell, and shit. On very rare occasions I use asshole. Oh and I enjoy a few made-up ones that I’m not sure even qualify as profanity, like frickin’ and Sci-Fi’s frack.

But I NEVER use the C-word, or any other profane slang that’s gender-moral specific like “ho,” or “slut;” or anything derogatory to sexual preference like “homo” or “faggot,” because I’m not a mean or bigoted person. And I almost never say “God damn” unless I really mean it, and then I’m usually deploying it against an insurance company. Used this way, it’s really more of a divine petition to the almighty, than a profanity.

Of course, as any reader knows, I have a great fondness for the word “fuck,” because it’s still edgy enough to carry some shock value, while not insulting anyone’s religion or risking the wrath of a deity. To be clear, however, I rarely deploy it in the way then Vice President Dick Cheney did on the floor of the Senate. I tend to use it as an adjective, exclamation, or a standalone noun. I rarely use it as a verb. I’m not one to advise someone else to get fucked or go fuck themselves. Although I just discovered “fuckwit,” for someone who’s being really stupid. I haven’t used it yet, but it seems like a fitting addition to my verbal arsenal.

Now, I confess to using fuck quite carelessly in speech and blogging. When it comes to blogging, well I’m pioneer diabetes blogger and the Wild West was full of bad fucking language, right? As to speech, I’ve found that working clinically with the poor, a good fuck goes a long way, so to speak. Being a greying tall skinny white guy with a stethoscope, I frequently get mistaken for a doctor. People get nervous around doctors, and aren’t themselves. They fear being judged. They don’t open up. They aren’t always entirely forthcoming. They hesitate to discuss their barriers.

There are literally hundreds of training programs for docs to try to teach them how to break the ice with their patients, and none of them work. But downloading someone’s meter and remarking, “Well, these numbers look pretty fucked up” will do the job in seven words, and in less than five seconds. It’s unexpected from someone in my position. It serves to break the tension, destroy pre-conceptions, and open new pathways for communication. It also serves to show that we are more alike than different. Most of my patients now freely drop f-bombs on me, too. As in, “This fucking diabetes pisses me off!” (Usually followed by an semi-embarrassed, “Please excuse my French.” You’re fucking excused.) Swearing at your diabetes is cathartic. Fucking as medicine, if you will.

Where I’m not fucking careless is when I’m writing a book. Books are different for me, and I take them VERY seriously. I craft my books carefully. I spend a lot of time on every chapter, every section, every graph, every sentence. When you see fuck in one of my books there’s a hell of a good reason for it. I’m drawing your attention to something. In one of my books, fuck is no late night comedy shock value prop, or careless exercise in venting. It’s a semantic slap in the reader’s face. I’m making you take notice. I’m demanding your attention because I’m telling you something important. Given my reputation for bad language, I think you’d be fucking surprised by how few times you’ll actually find the word “fuck” in any of my books. Go ahead. You need to re-read my books anyway. Count the fuckers.

That said, the use of fuck even once between the sacred covers of a book gets people riled up in a unique way. Particularly if it’s in a Hard Cover book. That’s academic sacrilege in many quarters. In fact, it has, no fucking kidding, got one of my books BANNED by the University of New Mexico for its “problematic language.” That pissed me the fuck off, but once I got over it, I realized that being the author of a banned book makes you a history-maker of sorts, and generally puts you in damn fine company. In fact, I should buy myself a “Banned Author” coffee cup over at Café Press, huh? Oooh! Or maybe a whiskey flask. That would be even more appropriate. Should it read “I’m a fucking Banned author,” or “Fucking proud to be a BANNED author”?

Oh. Wait. Right, I owe the fucking IRS too much frickin’ money to being buying any ego-soothing toys. (((Sigh))) Well, fuck…

By the way, the origins of the word fuck are unclear. It can be found in written documents at least as far back as the year 1475, but many fucking experts believe it’s older than that. After all, there’s no way to know how long it was in verbal use before someone had the courage to commit it to paper for the first time. And despite how people excuse unintended use of the word fuck, it doesn’t come to us from the French language. It might have come to us from German, or Norwegian, or Swedish, or Latin, or even Greek. Every fucking expert has his or her own fucking opinion about the fucking origin of fuck. How fucked-up is that?

Somewhat uniquely, fuck can serve as a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, a command, a conjunction, an exclamation, or as part of a compound word such as motherfucker (not a version I use unless I’m talking about a politician). It also hyphenates well. Consider: fucked-up, in-fucking-credible, un-fucking-believable, or abso-fucking-lutely. It can also be placed in time. In the past someone fucked you. In the present they can be fucking with you. You can warn them not to fuck with you in the future.

Fuck also has some cousins such as the word fucker, which depending on how it’s used can be either an insult or a compliment. Consider the use of, “You dumb fucker;” versus the use of, “He’s one tough fucker.”


Fuck is also a component part of many acronyms like the classic SNAFU and FUBAR, both of which have military origins. Wikipedia dates both to World War II, but my grandfather, who was a vet of the U.S. Army Engineers in WWI, once horrified my then-goody-two-shoes sister when he asked her if she really knew what her new favorite word—snafu—meant. They used it in the trenches. Literally.
Fuck also mixes well in unexpected combinations. Consider: fuck this, fuck that, or holy fuck (called a “liturgical profanity” by fucking experts).

What’s not to love about a word with such awesome semantic utility!

And I’m not the only one who loves a good fuck. Let me tell you about my fucking patient. She’s a type 1 like me, and about my age as well. She’s super-smart, being a college professor and biological researcher (ironically, given today’s fucking subject, she’s a sperm expert, but that part of the story will have to wait until another day).

Where the fuck was I? Oh, yes. So she’s on a pump and CGM, but still has trouble keeping her fucking diabetes in control. For decades she’s kept a diabetes journal. She started it right after her diagnosis, but she’s yet to run out of pages. In fact, it’s still half empty. That’s because, like many of us, she has a hard time keeping motivated. She’d journal her diabetes for a few days then throw in the fucking towel for months. That was until her doc, at another clinic, sent her to me.

I see her about every two weeks, and when I go to fetch her from the lobby she’s always writing in her journal. I’m privileged that she’ll often share what she’s written with me. One day recently this is what I saw:

I loved it so much I asked for her blessing to photograph it and share it with the universe. Right. It’s just the word fuck written over and over and over again. But what’s so fucking great about it is that she’s hand-written it in different type fonts! I don’t think I’ve even seen anything quite like that. Anyway, it gets my vote for the new National Anthem of Diabetes.

I just need somebody appropriately fucking talented to set it to music.

When the compass points south

My navigation through life is based on a five-pointed compass: The five cardinal things that make up 90% of my life. They are:

My family.
My diabetes.
My clinical work.
My writing.
My university work.

Normally, two of the five suck at any given moment and give me total stress. But at the same time, normally, two of the five give me great joy at any given moment. And normally, the fifth one is somewhere in the middle. All told, this keeps my universe in balance.

But the last six weeks or so hasn’t been normal. No, it’s been a perfect storm of all five sucking. I was stressed on all fronts. It wasn’t pretty, and I was in an extremely dark space. But the normal balance has been restored as mysteriously as it went out of whack, and I have no scars on my wrists to show for it. See? Even my dark sense of humor is fully recovered!

So anyway, in the middle of all of this, on February 27, I broke my New Year’s Resolution. Right. The one about how I was going to post every Wednesday. Well… two months is a pretty good run for a typical American New Year’s Res, right?

But since you haven’t heard from me for a month, some updates are in order before we get back to work. Some of you may recall that over at Diabetes Mine I had said I wasn’t sure I would stay on the Tandem t:slim pump because I was so vexed with the number of “are you sure” warning screens between me and my insulin. I was beginning to think I’d be better off, and less stressed, just going back to MDI.

Well, I’m still on the pump, but it was a damn close thing. Here’s how it went down: One night, after a particularly annoying day, at the end of a particularly annoying week, in which all this high-tech feldercarb I wear wasn’t doing me a damn bit of good, I had a classic DHF—a Diabetes Hissy Fit. I ripped out the infusion set and threw the pump in the corner. Hah! Take that fucking FDA and your fucking over-protective meddling design-for-the-safety of the stupidest diabetic on the planet requirements! I’ll show you!

I rummaged around in the fridge, muttering a continuous string of profanities, expletives, and curses until waaaaaaaay in the back I found a vial of Levemir and one single unexpired Humalog cartridge for my Luxura insulin pen.

Then the first problem reared its ugly head.

Apparently we’d moved my Luxura pen into storage during some first-of-the-year house cleaning. Crap.

Well, fine. I’ll just suck some insulin out of the cartridge with syringes until I can get to town. Where are the damn syringes?

Oh. Right. I donated every last one of them to needy patients at my clinic. Double damn. No way to take the Humalog or the Levemir.

I had to go get the pump back out of the corner and put it on again, swearing that after the weekend I’d pick up everything I needed at the clinic and be done with the meddling over-protective piece of shit once and for all.

But that day turned out to be the critical tipping point. Four days later, sitting in my office with boxes of syringes and three Luxura pen samples steps away, I’d gotten over it. The hissy fit had passed.

That doesn’t mean that I’m exactly in love with this pump. No. Far from it. But we’re getting accustomed to each other. I still find the slowness of the tube fill to be painful. The touch screen doesn’t always like my fingers. The number of warning screens still drives me batty, but I’ve learned to sail right through them without looking at them—totally defeating their purpose. And I still hate the fact the reverse correction doesn’t kick in until 70 mg/dL.

But I do like the fact that I don’t have a low every morning at 10:30 anymore, something I couldn’t really avoid on the basal shots. In fact, I’ve lost four pounds from reduced glucose tab consumption. And while my blood sugar is far from perfect—and probably never will be—it’s not too shabby. Well… that’s my perception anyway. Let me plug in my CGM real quick and we’ll get the truth of the matter:

OK. I’ve seen worse. My average blood sugar over the last week was 142, equivalent to an A1C in the mid-sixes. I’m running some nocturnal and early AM lows the last few days, as I’m eating smarter recently. In fact, just yesterday I reduced the basal for the second time in a week and it reminded me of how much I appreciate the extraordinarily easy programing the t:slim sports. And speaking of lows, another thing I’ve finally gotten into the habit of is setting a 30-minute zero-insulin temp rate when I have a low. No more throwing fuel on the fire. You can’t do that with basal insulin!

Oh, and back to eating smart for a moment, I have to give a shout-out to the folks at KIND, who have done the next best thing to curing diabetes: They developed a line of gluten-free, natural ingredient, no sugar alcohol added, low blood sugar-impact food bars that actually taste good! They’re called the Nuts & Spices line. I’ll talk about them more in the near future, but just know for now that they are amazing. Yeah, I know that some of my post-breakfast trace lines don’t look too impressive, but those are days I was running low and didn’t bolus for the bars at all. If I’m in target in the morning, and bolus the net carbs, I can damn near flat-line my blood sugar! And they keep my hunger at bay until noon. The kind folks at KIND sent me some samples a while back, and I liked them so much I ordered a whole case online!

Anyway, now you are up-to-date. I’m more or less back, and I’ll try to post more often, but I won’t promise weekly posts. My April is looking pretty crazy. Just last week, one of the front desk girls, who was trying to schedule one of my patients for a follow-up, called me and said, “Do you realize you only have three open appointments left for all of April? And may I remind you that we are still in March?” Holy crap. Well, it’s nice to be popular.

However, just to whet your appetite, in the coming weeks I plan to talk about:

The return of the ??? Monster. Yes, the classic disease of the Dexcom 7+ can infect the new G4 systems, too.

The truth behind the t:slim’s power plug cover.

The secret story of the girl who says “fuck” more than I do.

The icon on the t:slim pump that’s actually a hidden button!

Why the new OmniPod will suck just as bad as the t:slim—perhaps worse—when it comes to federally-mandated over protectionism.

Why some of my books are beginning to speak for themselves; and what my relationship to the 34th best-selling biotechnology book in the country is.

And why my wife thinks healthcare reform sucks. Stay tuned.