The Issue: Bill Cosby’s recommendations for today’s parents, including curbing children’s sugar intake.
***
In his opinion piece, Bill Cosby shines a valuable spotlight on the responsibility he says Americans should take when it comes to our health choices (“A Plague Called Apathy,” PostScript, June 9).
Unfortunately, he fed into a common misunderstanding about the different types of diabetes. Cosby describes juvenile diabetes as a problem that arises when children consume too much sugar.
Juvenile diabetes is the former name of what we now call Type 1 diabetes. The name has been changed to better reflect all ages of people with the disease, including the growing number of adults. T1D is an auto-immune disease and not brought about by consuming too much sugar or any lifestyle choices.
Cosby likely meant to refer to Type 2 diabetes, which can be related to obesity and is also increasing in children.
Maureen Fitzgerald
Manhattan
My son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 18 months old. Blending the two different diseases, Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, aka adult-onset diabetes, opens my son up to all kinds of rude comments.
There is also a genetic component to Type 2 diabetes. My husband, who was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at age 37, is not obese and has never eaten a lot of sugar.Kirsten Sigrist
Medway, Mass.
The effect of an ill-informed media will make a difference in the way my child and others view their disease as they age. It casts an unfair stereotype.
There is no cure for Type 1, and babies as young as a few days old are diagnosed with this disease. Most of our children have never had any form of refined sugar at time of diagnosis. Cassie Bumcrot
San Francisco
Bill was so right. If you buy a plant, you must give it water and sunlight to flourish.
We must start having children with a parent who will help to harvest the fruit of his loin.
Please make what was old new again where kids respected elders.
Carol Hoousendove
Metuchen, NJ
Cosby is a man I greatly admire and agree with on many issues, but I sharply disagree with his assumption that we should emulate Muslims because they raise their children better.
How can you emulate a culture that produces “honor killings,” beheadings and suicide bombings? Why emulate a group with people who enslave women and children, going so far as to use their women and children as human shields in times of conflict?
Cosby would have better recommended that we return to what the Bible teaches: “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is not a call to beat children, but a call to discipline children and give them direction. “Honor thy father and thy mother” doesn’t mean worship the parents, but respect parents for the love and protection they offer. We should teach our children love for all mankind, not hate for all “infidels.”
Radphord-Leon Howard
West Richland, Wash.
There is much about what Cosby says about responsibility and the dangerous apathy that is destroying whole communities that I completely agree with, but it seems he’s only addressing one segment of The Post’s audience.
Irresponsibility and apathy aren’t a black problem, but a national one. Ask anyone on the street the most elementary question about American civics, and you’ll get mostly blank stares. Ask them who should win the latest “American Idol,” and you can’t shut them up. People’s priorities are completely upside-down, and it is borne from encouraged ignorance.
Cosby also suggests that we emulate black Muslims. The Nation of Islam is led by Louis Farrakhan, an anti-Semite who calls white folks “devils.” Are the obvious problems with the Nation of Islam supposed to be emulated, too?
Since he identifies as a Christian — literally, an emulator of Christ — why did he not speak of emulating a Christian community that cares and is held together in love, rather than racial separation?John Beam
Lenoir, NC