Sometimes, what I know, and what I believe, isn't politic to proselytize.

I don't mean religion in it's Deity-centric sense, or partisan politics the way it is played out in our system of Federal, state, and local governments. I'm talking about diabetes politics.

I tend to turn the "more insulin, more strips" outcry on its ears, because when I look at the issue I don't see it as a public health issue or an access-to-healthcare issue, but as issues of crime, infrastructure, and -- at it's most basic level -- poverty. While I understand the "Type 1 versus Type 2" issues of proportion, confusion, alarmist publicity, and palliation-versus-remediation, I'd much rather us present a united front to those we approach for funds to prescreen, arrest, remediate, and (eventually) cure all types of diabetes than get caught up in internicine squabbles that would turn our benefactors away.

I understand the outrage that many of our type 1 compatriots feel when they are plowed under by spam -- through multiple online and offline services -- that suggests their autoimmune disease is something they brought on themselves, or that their mothers brought on them through improper infant or childhood nutrition, and I understand that there is a small-but-significant portion of people with type 2 diabetes who were diagnosed young and who have never been overweight or obese a day in their lives.

This does not cover (or excuse?) the fact that many of us with type 2 diabetes are, or were, overweight or obese, that we've yo-yo dieted and crash dieted enough times during our formative years to turn the most robust metabolism astray, that we eat a toxic diet and live a toxic lifestyle -- all of which contribute in some manner to our more-permanent metabolic misfunctions.

I'm not the only person whose diabetes and other metabolic dysfunctions have been mitigated by a healthier diet, a cleaner diet, a less-processed diet -- and while many are economically or logistically unable to make those choices, there are many others who could benefit from making those changes. Proselytizing cleaner, closer-to-the-earth diets is a significant subcategory of both health and diet self-help books. While the exact details may vary from decade to decade, the category remains robust enough for publishers to continue pushing out the paper.

That said, how do I respond when an imprimateur whose publications I consider (relatively) reliable and accurate, and whose viewpoints largely (but not entirely) reflect my own, e-mails me an announcement with the huge headlines "Conquer Diabetes Without Drugs" and "Eat to Beat Diabetes", advertising a book that suggests that diabetes can be conquered with some dietary changes and, oh yeah, possibly that "amazing herb that lets you start making your own insulin again" -- set off in large, bold, block printed text?

My own experience tells me that some forms of type 2 diabetes can be treated -- at least for some period of time -- without resort to herbals or pharmaceuticals, but also that this is not true for every form of type 2 diabetes, and that it is not true for any form of type 1 diabetes. While the press agency was careful to cover its backside with the in-text phrase, "As the author declares, speaking of type 2 diabetes..." the pullout on that "amazing herb" states that it even restarts insulin production in people with type 1 diabetes. Having had a reference shelf of herbals since my university days, I'm curious about what the author has to say -- but given the issues my friends and colleagues with type 1 diabetes have been having with this genre of book, it's impolitic (at best!) to support an author or publisher that could conceivably stand in the way of less-skeptical patients with diabetes getting the medical care they need to stay alive and healthy.

Even if that "amazing herb" is a real, honest-to-goodness cure.