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This column, by Daily World international affairs writer, Tom Foley, appeared in that paper April 25.

I want to pay tribute to the memory of a man who saved my life — and the lives of possibly 45 million other diabetics like me. I mean Dr. Charles Herbert Best, Canadian biochemist, co- discoverer of insulin in 1921. Dr. Best died March 31 in Toronto at a;

Diabetes is a condition in which the body fails to produce the natural hormone, insulin. Your body transforms the food you eat into sugar (glucose), but for this sugar to be converted into energy, insulin is necessary. A body without insulin is like a car without a carburetor.

There are two forms of diabetes. One is called maturity- onset diabetes and generally affects overweight people past the age of 40; it can usually be controlled by diet alone, without insulin. The other form, juvenile diabetes, shows up in children and young people when there is no natural insulin in their bodies that they can use.

Before the discovery of insulin \in 1921, juvenile diabetics could

An American pays tribute to a pioneering Canadian

expect to survive only a few months or years at most. Dr. Best and Dr. Frederick Banting succeeded in isolating and identifying the hormone in their laboratory at the University of Toronto. Preceding them by a few months was Dr. N. Paulescu of Bucharest University in Romania, whose work was largely ignored until a few years ago.

It is a curious fact that Dr. Banting, an M.D., and Dr. J.J.R. Macleod, physiology professor at Toronto, were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923. Macleod’s con- tribution was in lending Banting and Best some laboratory space. But Best and Paulescu remain ignored by the Nobel Committee down to this day. To Banting’s credit, he shared his Nobel Prize money with Best, and always insisted that the discovery was a joint one. The Nobel Committee should have given the prize to Banting, Best and Paulescu.

Diabetes affects 10 million people in the U.S., only five million of whom are aware they have diabetes. It is the third- leading cause of death (after heart disease and cancer) in this country, responsible for 300,000 deaths annually.

Diabetes is also the No. 1 cause of new cases of blindness in the U.S., and No. 2 cause of blindness in general. The incidence . of diabetes has increased 50 percent in the last decade — which may represent better reporting or increased awareness of it. But diabetes certainly can be described. as a major social

problem as well as a medical one. °

The first reported case of diabetes is contained in an an- cient Egyptian papyrus, dated around 1500 B.C. ‘And yet, even today, nobody really knows what it is or what causes it. Insulin, taken by injection, brings it under control but does not

“Cure’”’ it. A disease has some causative agent (virus,.bacteria, or other) ; diabetes seems to have none, so it cannot properly be called a disease. That nebulous term, ‘‘heredity,”’ is often used, without explanation, much as physicists use the term ‘‘gravity”’ without being able to explain what it is. If pressed, I prefer to describe it as a “malfunction.”

It irritates me to no end that this capitalist society largely ignores something that is killing 300,000 people per year in the U.S., while it is eager to spend billions to build mass ex- termination weapons capable of killing 300,000 people in two minutes of “enhanced radiation’’.

That I would live better as a diabetic in a socialist country I can prove by cold, hard statistics.

In the U.S., the average life- span of a diabetic is one-third less

than that of non-diabetics. In the) German Democratic Republic, both diabetics and non-diabetics have exactly the same average life-span (which is quite long, comparable to Sweden, Norway and other capitalist countries). Life expectancy in the GDR is 74 for women and 69 for men; the GDR has about 460,000 diabetics out of a total population of 17 million. GDR medical scientists at Humbolt University strongly dispute U.S. claims that the shorter life-span of diabetics is something ‘‘natural’’ and “unavoidable.”’

One of the many crimes of which U.S. imperialism is guilty is the murder of many diabetics in Cuba with the sudden im- position of the-U.S. blockade — against insulin among other things — in 1961. Socialist Cuba in 1970 b jan a ten-year national program to develop a system of integrated medical care for Cuba’s 45,000 diabetics, which has been amazingly successful and has been written up in many U.S. specialized journals. Among other things, Cuba has cut cases of diabetic acidosis by. 50 per- cent; acidosis or diabetic coma remains a major killer in the U.S. Cuba, the ‘‘sugar island’’, would | be safer for me than the capitalist US.!

Although the 1980 Moscow’ Olympics are still two years away, “Topa,” the Olympic mascot bear, has hroughout the USSR. Here, he shakes hands with construction . —Tass photo

already begun his public relations tours t

workers on a building site in Minsk.

Composer dead at 74

Music world mourns Aram Khachaturyan

Aram Khachaturyan, the Soviet Armenian composer whose piano concerto and dramatic ballet Spartacus, had won him interna- tional renown as one of the major composers of the 20th century, died Monday after a lengthy illness. He was 74.

A prolific composer whose works include concertos, ballets, film scores, symphonies and chamber music, Khachaturyan was born in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in 1903 and entered the Gnesin School of Music in Moscow at the age of 19. He was first a student of the cello although he soon established

‘ himself as a composer of some note

and by the 1930’s his name was familiar in Prague, Vienna, Paris and London.

The famous American pianist Arthur Rubenstein premiered his

piano concerto in New York at the end of the 1930’s.

He was probably best known for his ‘Sabre Dance” from the ballet “Gayan”’ which, with its pulsating rhythms and Armenian musical inflections, has captivated audiences wherever it has bee! heard.

“I grew up in an atmosphere of rich folk music,” Khachaturya? said in an interview four years ag0 “and the life of the people, theif festivities and rites, their joys an

sorrows, the vivid soundings of

their national melodies — all thes impressions were absorbed by my mind and determined the founda- tions of my musical thinking.”

A two-time winner of the Stalin

- Prize, Khachaturyan was also the

composer of the anthem of the Ar 3 menian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Labor is the loser in assembly-line flick —

When a film comes along which revolves around Black and White workers determined to improve their lives within a situation where their union leaders are corrupt, it is a welcome sight. Such is the appearance of Blue Collar, but it certainly isn’t the reality.

The story opens in Detroit, and centers around three young auto workers, Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel), and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto). Zeke and Smokey are Black, Jerry is white. The three are found in a bar near the auto plant complaining about the foremen, their weak union leaders and their daily battle with the job and rising prices.

They aren’t against the union, and defend it when a suspected government agent tries to get them to denounce it because of its leaders. So far so good.

Zeke and Jerry, both married,

. hold down second jobs. Zeke gets hit by the Internal Revenue Ser-

vice for $2,000 for falsely claiming.

six children instead of three. Jerry gets socked with the prospect of tremendous medical bills when his teenaged daughter gets braces on her teeth.

At this point, the story goes off the deep end. In need of money, they get their street-wise friend, Smokey, and decide to hit the local union office safe. They break into the union office at night, knock out a security guard who detects them, and flee with a measly $600. But they find a notebook with a record of union loan sharking on a big scale and decide to blackmail union officials.

From here on things get tougher for the three. The union officials with their ties to the mob send goons over to Jerry’s house where they are intercepted by Smokey who beats them with a baseball bat. The union then offers Zeke a committeeman’s job in exchange for the notebook, which he turns

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—May 5, 1978—Page 10

over. Smokey gets killed in the paint shop at the plant, apparently the victim of the union-mobsters. Jerry gets chased by two guys in a car late one night, and feeling isolated and threatened, turns himself in to the FBI.

The only progressive aspect of the film is the friendship of the two Black workers and the white worker. However, that is destroyed by the end, when Jerry and Zeke go at each other with mechanics’ tools in the plant as each has felt betrayed by the other.

Blue Collar is much more than an adventure film. It-is an ex- tremely anti-union and anti-labor film.

It is noteworthy that the union in the film is not the United Auto Workers (UAW), but the “AAW,” according to the sign shown on the front of the union hall. Yet, we see a “Ford”’ sign over the auto plant.

BLUE COLLAR; Starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet

Kotto. Written and directed by Paul Schrader. A Universal release.

RICHARD PRYOR IN BLUE COLLAR .. . labor is the target.

Universal Pitures undoubtedly realized that they risked a gigantic lawsuit if they used the UAW initials in such a slanderous anti union film. Apparently, there are no complaints anticipated from Ford Motor Company though.

Blue Collar is presented as 4 hard-hitting statement about life 1? the U.S. today.

An advertisement for it read- s: “If you’re rich, you can buy it. you’re anything else you gotta fight for it.’’ No complaints there. Bul the overall message is: You can't fight the ‘‘system”’ and win, or if you do fight, be sure to fight anybody but the company.

And why not. Universal Pictures is big business too. It has yearly sales of $60-$75 million and em ploys 2,000 yonkers of its own.

—Paul Klause?

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