Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It

Written by award-winning investigative journalist Dan Hurley, Diabetes Rising is a gripping expose of the quest for a cure for the disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people around the world. Hurley chronicles today’s diabetes epidemic—how the disease has grown so dramatically, why the American Diabetes Association focuses its attention on just a small handful of available treatments, and why the research being done today doesn’t look beyond accepted types of treatments. Just as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation uncovered the sordid details leading to an epidemic of obesity, Dan Hurley uncovers the hidden truths of what is being researched—and even more importantly, what is not.

Diabetes Rising explores both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, one of the leading causes of deaths in the United States. With ground-breaking research and compelling stories seen through an investigative, historical, and narrative lens, Diabetes Rising couples big-picture insight with intimate reporting. The book yields riveting insight into the struggle between the pervasive malady and the medical community’s ongoing search for answers. Informed but not dominated by the author’s own experience as a Type 1 diabetic, Diabetes Rising grants exclusive access to new studies, innovative treatments, and determined patients. Hurley’s sharp, entertaining, and provocative read will change how readers understand diabetes, and the cultures, conditions, and medical climates in which it thrives.

Dan Hurley is a science writer and journalist who regularly contributes to The New York Times Science Times. He also writes for numerous medical newspapers, including Neurology Today (the newspaper of the American Academy of Neurology), Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News, Pharmacy Practice News, General Surgery News, and others. He has been senior writer at the Medical Tribune and contributing editor to Psychology Today, where his article on the violent mentally ill won the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ award for investigative journalism in 1995. He is the former Vice President of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

He is also the author of Natural Causes: Death, Lies, and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry and The 60-Second Novelist: What 22,613 People Taught Me About Life.