Another reason you don't hear about remission is it takes a great deal of effort. Even the health care system seems content to prescribe complex lifelong treatment regimens instead of equipping people with the tools they need to effectively manage type 2 diabetes, possibly reverse the disease or, best of all, avoid it completely.

Chuck Lynch created his own diabetes-reversal program, and it has become the retiree's new job. He dropped 30 pounds with the help of Weight Watchers, and now carefully measures every morsel and drop that goes into his mouth. He joined a gym where he does yoga, water aerobics, and other exercise classes several times a week.

"I went to town on it," he said. And it has paid off. "I feel better than I have in years. I want to keep it that way."

FRAMING THE PROBLEM

Slender joggers, hardly typical people with type 2 diabetes, laud their glucose-reading meters and test strips to evening network TV news viewers, typically middle-age and older, prime type 2 targets. Friendly older gentlemen speak of their "diabeetus" medication in other commercials as if the deadly disease is a pal who stopped by to shoot the breeze.

Don't be fooled: Diabetes kills. And maims. This year alone it will kill 3.2 million people worldwide. It's the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. As many as 80 percent of people with diabetes will die from heart attack or stroke. Half will likely experience damage to the nerves in their limbs. Diabetic foot disease, caused by changes in blood vessels and nerves, often leads to ulceration and eventual amputation. In fact, diabetes is the leading cause of non-traumatic lower-limb amputation. Ditto for kidney failure. One of every 50 people with diabetes will become blind within 15 years.

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls diabetes a "slow-motion catastrophe." From an estimated 30 million living with it in 1985, to 171 million in 2000, a minimum of 366 million people will have been diagnosed with diabetes by 2030.

Meredith E. Young, an assistant medical professor at Montreal's McGill University, researches the role of language in shaping how the media present, and the public perceives, medical conditions. She said in an email that "media attention to particular disorders seems to influence public perceptions of what is serious, rather than what is seriously driving public attention (and therefore media attention)."

When the media do focus on type 2 diabetes, said Sarah Gollust, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, they give twice as much coverage to the behavioral risks for it than any of the other factors that contribute. But this over-emphasis on personal responsibility tends to blame and stigmatize people with type 2 diabetes or who are obese. Those living with the disease may feel it's their fault if they can't always maintain the ideal blood sugar level. Worst of all, said Gollust, public support could erode as people are expected to cover the costs, however they can, of a medical condition it's believed they brought on themselves.