Is huffable bacon the answer to the diabetes epidemic?

One of the questions on the latest version of the US citizenship test is as follows: “What is America’s national meat?” We all know the correct answer is: bacon. It is one of the myriad of factors helping the US to dominate the Fat Fuck Olympiad every 4 years. On the bright side, obesity is very good for business. According to the CDC, 1 in 3 Americans born after the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. My eyes light up as I compute that tragic statistic into $’s and ¢’s.

First, a little Diabetes 101. There are 2 flavors to choose from: Type I & Type II. Type I is akin to “good” AIDS; and Type II, the much maligned “bad “AIDS. Bad AIDS diabetes accounts for 90% of all diabetes in the US. Medtronic $MDT have a large slice of this market. They have a superb pump that really helps people manage their blood sugar levels.

The original insulin pump company, Minimed, was spearheaded by a guy named Alfred Mann. He sold this technology to Medtronic and the rest is histrory. He subsequently sold pacemaker technology to St Jude $STJ and Cochlear implants to Boston Scientific $BSX. I doft my cap to this guy. He gives credibility to the existence of American exceptionalism.

The cash rich 85-year-old Alfred then plowed $900 million into his new company, called Mannkind $MNKD. This is a stock that has been getting a lot of twiternet buzz. They developed huffable insulin. For reals. Targeted to a patient population too lazy to go to the gym and lay off the fries. Sounds like a great idea? I was tempted to buy the stock as I knew all about his track record in business. I did a little digging and I came to the conclusion that it’s fucking nuts. A billion $’s of nutz. Pfizer had a drug called Exubra. It was released in 2006 and pulled in 2007. It was nothing major… only the occasional case of lung cancer to worry about.

I can imagine the scenario playing out in the boardroom at the Mankind corporation. Alfred – having walked on water his whole life – is surrounded by sycophants with MBA’s and nobody with balls enough to tell the old guy he’s nuts. He proceeds to spunk $1 billion of his own cash and the FDA says they need to do another 18-months of work. The stock went from $10 to $2 this year. To make this story even sillier, some asshole engineer changed the design of the proprietary inhaler during the trial phase. An engineer probably made a revision to a CAD file, thinking it wouldn’t make a difference. Well, it made a difference to the shareholders and the FDA. And, they have yet to find the white masses on the chest X-rays. It appears they are saving the best for last.

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