Posted by Rose Fernandez on May 25, 1997 at 16:41:49:
In Reply to: Today’s Sermon from JDF Countdown posted by Robert Graham, Jr. on May 18, 1997 at 17:05:08:
Hi Robert
That was some analysis of J.D.F. Countdown! As someone with 18 years direct personal experience with corporate communications and with diabetes I understand what you are saying. You sent me running back to read Countdown again to make sure it is all true. I have become so used to Countdown being a shallow piece of P.R. fluff that I had stopped spending any time on it. I had failed to see how J.D.F. were incriminating themselves as they tried to tell us how great they are.
There are two ways J.D.F. can respond to this criticism. They can improve their public relations while continuing to behave in the same old self serving way. Or they can change their ways. We all need to watch for evidence of real change not just slicker communications.
J.D.F. are not the only ones taking our money to find a cure for diabetes and then spending it on themselves and their buddies. I just read that our own N.I.H. gave $537,304 to Dr. Lawrence Fisher at U.C. at San Francisco (my old alma mater) to "investigate the sociological and cultural factors that affect control of type II diabetes for non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics." Was there really no better place to spend half a million dollars?
What is the problem? Are people with diabetes just a convenient excuse to raise millions of dollars that they will never benefit from? If J.D.F. asks for your money to seek a cure for diabetes and then ignores all the best reaearch there should be a class action suit for misrepresentation.
Until I visited the Islet Association web pages I didn't even know about this rsearch. I called my local J.D.F. research guy and he knew less than I did but said I should not get my hopes up. The more I learn about J.D.F. the less likely I am to get my hopes up.
Rose-Anne