Washington, D.C., April 21, 1999—Today, John and Allison McDonough—a father and daughter both with Type 1 diabetes—will testify before Members of Congress on Capitol Hill about funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and diabetes research. Mr. McDonough, Chairman of the Board of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International (JDF) and Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Newell Rubbermaid Inc., will join Allison, a board member of the JDF Chicago Chapter, before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The purpose is to provide Members of Congress with an understanding of why funding for diabetes research is critical and should be a national priority. The testimony will be at the House subcommittee’s annual hearing, which allows public witnesses to testify on important areas for funding consideration at the NIH and other programs.

John J. McDonough:  Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am John J. McDonough, a husband, father, grandfather, volunteer advocate, and businessman. I am the Vice Chairman and CEO of Newell Rubbermaid Inc., and I’m pleased to be here today as the Chairman of the International Board of Directors of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

    I thank you and the other Members of the Subcommittee for your strong support of medical research over the years. Last year’s 15-percent increase in NIH funding is moving us closer to a cure for diabetes and its complications. We are very much looking forward to working with you again this year to try to secure another 15-percent increase so that every identified diabetes research opportunity can be fully funded.

    I am here today with my daughter Allison. She is a JDF volunteer as I am, and has diabetes as I do. Our desire to find a cure couldn’t be greater. To date, our family has contributed $14.5 million dollars to JDF and will keep on giving until a cure is found.

    My wife, Marilyn, lost two of her aunts to diabetes. My paternal grandfather died from the complications of diabetes in the 1920s. He was ravaged by this disease just at the time insulin was becoming available. I have had insulin-dependent diabetes for 56 years, and Allison has had insulin-dependent diabetes for 16 years. Marilyn and I have four other children and four and two-thirds grandchildren, with more to come, we hope. And, we don’t want to see any more of this disease that cripples and kills so many people every year.

    I remember the day I was diagnosed very clearly. I was in a large ward at a Chicago hospital, and my parents came in and told me I had something called diabetes. My father was simply devastated. He had married late, was then 50 years old, and it hadn’t been that many years since he watched his father die from this disease. Thanks to my mother, I understood perfectly what I had to do. You see, she was a very modern lady, even 56 years ago. Like young parents today, she believed in time outs...the only difference being that her idea of a time out was 30 seconds to rest her arm before cracking me again with my father’s razor strap!

    From the time I was a child, I knew what I had to do to deal with this problem called diabetes, and I’ve done that all my life. There are probably few people who have worked harder at controlling my blood sugar levels than I have over a long period of time. Yet over 55,000 shots later, my experience makes the point that insulin is not a cure and it doesn’t prevent complications. It is merely life support. Despite good genes and excellent medical care, I’ve not been able to avoid some complications of this terrible disease, including the amputation of my left leg last September.

    We cannot become complacent. The research being done today is only a fraction of what needs to be done, and the relevant research that can be done today is limited only by the money available to fund it.

Allison McDonough:  I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1983 at the age of 25. My parents were devastated. Emotionally, my father felt he was to blame, even though intellectually he knew he had no control over my diagnosis. And my mother, who had watched her aunts die from the disease, now had the same fears for me that she had had for my father for so many years.

    When my father was diagnosed in 1943 at the age of six, he was told he would not live to be ten. At ten he was told he probably wouldn’t live to be 20, and so on. He is fond of saying that he is not afraid of dying, but is afraid of not living. I, however, am afraid of both, and not just for myself but for my dad, and also the undiagnosed members of my family.

    Living with diabetes, with all its injections, blood tests and insulin reactions is a cumbersome and difficult full-time job, and there is no such thing as remission. Yet it’s the constant dread of wondering when diabetes will strike our family again that I hate more.

    Last fall my father not only lost his leg, he almost lost his life. There was one week after the amputation in which his stump needed to be left open. Every day I forced myself to look into his open leg, searching for signs in his tissue that healing was taking place. He would cry and tell me not to look, and that it wouldn’t happen to me. That hole in his leg has left a hole in my heart, and just as I forced myself to stare it down, I don’t want my siblings or future generations of my family to ever have to stare down the truth about diabetes as we who live with it do. In my family I want this disease to end with me.

John J. McDonough:  Diabetes kills one person every three minutes and reduces life expectancy by 30 percent. The disease costs our nation $98 billion dollars annually and absorbs one of every five Medicare dollars. While we at JDF work hard to raise funds to support research that is leading us closer to a cure, we need your help.

    As you know, the Diabetes Research Working Group established by your Subcommittee has issued a report, which includes a plan to attack the epidemic of diabetes and its complications. The report also contains a specific recommendation for the National Institutes of Health to provide $827 million dollars for diabetes research in fiscal year 2000, a level supported by JDF.

	More Information:
	Summary of the Report Roster of the Members of the DRWG Summary of Budget Recommendations Lay Summaries of the DRWG Recommendations Press Release: Diabetes Mortality on the Rise JDF Position Paper on the DRWG JDF Communications Chairman Testifies before House

    We seek your help in securing this funding so that every parent can tell every child with diabetes that everything possible is being done to find a cure. We speak for all of our fellow JDF volunteers—both children and adults who suffer from diabetes and/or work on behalf of their loved ones—when we say that only a cure will suffice. Mr. Chairman, with continued support from you and the other Members of the Subcommittee, we will find that cure.

    Thank you for this opportunity to testify, and we hope to see you back on the North Shore of Chicago again soon.