It’s the 4th Annual Diabetes Blog Week! If you want to participate, or if you want to see what other diabetes bloggers have to say about the daily topics over the next few days, head over to Karen’s blog at Bitter~Sweet and jump in.

Today’s blog prompt comes from Briley over at inDpendence.

Recently various petitions have been circulating the Diabetes Online Community, so today let’s pretend to write our own. Tell us who you would write the petition to – a person, an organization, even an object (animate or inanimate) – get creative!! What are you trying to change and what have you experienced that makes you want this change?

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and presented his vision that the United States would put a man on the moon and safely return him to Earth before the end of the decade. Eight years later, with an unprecedented national determination, and financial support from the top levels of our government, the United States did exactly that.

Imagine if our government, our Congressional leaders, and our medical experts today put the same kind of determination into curing Type 1 diabetes that the brilliant minds of yesteryear did in getting a man to the moon and back. I want to see leaders with the gumption to embrace seemingly impossible ideas, like curing diabetes, and support them with the same enthusiasm and determination as the leaders in the 1960’s did to send a man hurdling out of Earth’s atmosphere toward a floating dustball, have him land, and then safely return. I want to see every single level of government, big pharma, and supposed research foundations, along with parents, children, and people just like me with diabetes working together to embrace solutions for ways that curing diabetes can be done, rather than excuses for how difficult it is. I know it’s difficult. I get how complicated diabetes is. I live with it every single day, and I see my friends thrive with this disease, and I see them die with this disease.

If we can imagine in eight short years how to send a human being on a rocket fuel powered missile 238,900 miles through a vacuum to land on a dusty, dark, desolate piece of planet with no life, air, water, food, or electricity, and then have him travel the 238,900 miles back safely, then we should be able to imagine how to cure a disease that we’ve already figured out how to live with for the past 90 years.

To view other posts on this topic, click here.