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<td align="center"><font size="6"><strong>Many Voices,
One Goal</strong></font></td>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Many Voices, One Goal</strong></font></p>
<p>As surprising as it seems to some people, the Juvenile
Diabetes Foundation International (JDFI) does not exist to fund
research. It exists in the belief that its efforts will help
bring about an end to the disease, to discover a cure. Toward
that goal, research is a means, not the end itself. We use our
funds &#151; our donors&#146; funds, your funds &#151; to support
the best research because it represents the major hope for
prevention and eradication of diabetes and its devastating
consequences.</p>
<p>We are fully aware that the most exacting bench research, the
boldest clinical trial, the most promising technology mean
nothing if the result is not ultimately a cure for the disease.
That&#146;s why all of us who are involved with JDFI and its work
have committed &#151; and recommitted &#151; ourselves to the
search for a cure.</p>
<p>On the following pages, you will walk a pathway into the
hearts of people who play special roles in this search.</p>
<p>Here are the voices of some of the parents who, on hearing the
disheartening diagnosis of a child&#146;s illness, helped create
JDFI and who continue to lead the organization today&#133;</p>
<p>some of the parents who, confident that their stricken
children and others like them can be helped, work as volunteers
to provide guidance&#133;some of the many researchers who,
certain that science will ultimately produce the sought-after
cure, work tirelessly toward that end&#133;some of the countless
JDFI private and public partners whose contributions make the
scientists&#146; research possible. Finally, here are the voices
of some of our many members and friends around the world who
believe in and share our goals.</p>
<p>One goal, actually. To be known, together, as the people who
cured diabetes.</p>
<p>The leadership of parents of children with diabetes led to the
founding of JDFI, and sustains the organization today&#133;The
mold for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International was cast
by the personal, passionate commitment of our founders. That same
fierce covenant motivates today&#146;s volunteer leadership and
keeps us focused on the only thing that is important: a cure.</p>
<p>Take, for example, the words of Carol Lurie, a founding member
of JDFI and still an active volunteer 27 years later. &quot;I
remember the day my son Steve was diagnosed the way I remember
Pearl Harbor,&quot; she says, &quot;as a day that would change
everything forever. It was thirty years ago, and he was at summer
camp. Looking back, I realize I had missed the now-so-obvious
symptoms: the relentless thirst, the frequent urination....&quot;</p>
<p>Carol&#146;s reaction to her son&#146;s disease was typical of
how JDFI&#146;s parents respond &#151; sometimes, as she says,
&quot;as a means of self-preservation&quot; during those initial
days and weeks while the significance of the diagnosis sinks in,
but then, with an inflexible commitment to play their part in the
search for a cure.</p>
<p>&quot;We learned about the young organization JDFI and its
visionary founder Lee Ducat, and we became determined to help it
grow,&quot; says Carol. &quot;We worked and watched as government
took its place as the major funder of diabetes research. And
looking for additional support, we went to both individuals and
major corporations. We had one aim: to try to make life better
for our child and others like him.&quot;</p>
<p>Thinking back on her efforts, Carol smiles. &quot;Twenty-seven
years isn&#146;t a long time in the history of scientific
research, but it can be a lifetime if your child has
diabetes.&quot;</p>
<p>At JDFI today, the new generation of leadership is no less
passionate in its commitment. </p>
<p>&quot;I have to search deep in my memory to recall what a life
without diabetes is like,&quot; says Sandy Silvestri, a member of
the JDFI Board. Her awakening to the affliction came suddenly
some five years ago when, on a November morning, she could not
rouse her two-year-old son from a deep sleep. &quot;We drove to
the emergency room with Joey in my arms,&quot; she says.
&quot;He&#146;d been sick for a few days, and a doctor had put
him on antibiotics. Only when he slipped into a coma did we find
out what was really wrong. That day changed everything in our
lives, which have been ruled by diabetes ever since.&quot;</p>
<p>Sandy explains that she once asked a researcher who himself
had diabetes what he considered the most serious complication of
the disease. &quot;He told me it was the minute-to-minute demands
on his mind, the accounting for diabetes, no matter what else he
was doing.&quot;</p>
<p>&quot;For him,&quot; she comments, &quot;as for us, diabetes
always has to come first.&quot;</p>
<p>The same holds true for all of us at JDFI, diabetes &#151; and
the search for a cure.</p>
<p>Naturally, as parents of children with diabetes, those
volunteers who ensure the research we fund meets our mission take
their responsibilities personally&#133;With an understanding that
only a parent can have, these volunteers support the researchers
striving to end our search for a cure. Theirs is a natural
dedication. There is no greater force than the passion of the
people who not only desire a cure, but who need a cure.</p>
<p>Take Emily Spitzer, for example, who serves as the volunteer
Chair of Research for JDFI, and whose daughter, Rebecca, has
diabetes. &quot;My daughter,&quot; says Emily, &quot;often asks
if what I&#146;m doing for the foundation will make her life
better.</p>
<p>It&#146;s a question that I ask myself constantly, and I ask
it of our researchers as well. By asking, it&#146;s easy to keep
in mind that we&#146;re not in the business of funding science
for the sake of science. We want answers, for my daughter and for
others&#146; sons and daughters. We don&#146;t want studies
&#151; but interventions that prevent diabetes, maintain normal
blood sugar, prevent complications.&quot;</p>
<p>With the full realization that answers do not come without
expense and effort, JDFI recently assembled a Research Task Force
to evaluate all current research in diabetes, along with our
research funding. A process called &quot;mapping&quot; will help
us to determine where JDFI dollars should go, whether there are
substantive areas in which we should concentrate, and the funding
vehicles that we should use to achieve our mission. The results
will aid us in moving to the next step, taking research from the
laboratory bench to the patient&#146;s bedside.</p>
<p>&quot;Rebecca and others like her must live with all the
terrible complications that diabetes brings on, all the while
taking insulin and pricking their fingers day in and day out just
to stay alive,&quot; says Emily. &quot;So when she asks if what
I&#146;m doing will help, it&#146;s desperately important that
I&#146;m able to answer, &#145;Yes.&#146;&quot;</p>
<p>The new JDFI endeavor to &quot;map&quot; research quickly
became a full-time concern for volunteer Sandra Puczynski. Her
qualifications as an expert in the field made her an obvious
choice &#151; a doctorate in clinical research, experience as a
diabetes educator, and membership on the JDFI Lay Review
Committee. But add to those a passion, a dedication that springs
from the fact that her 13-year-old daughter, Michelle, was
diagnosed with diabetes before she reached her first birthday.</p>
<p>&quot;This is a complicated disease, and research dollars are
limited,&quot; Sandra says. &quot;Already, the &#145;maps&#146;
we have prepared are being studied by a task force drawn from the
worlds of academia, industry, biotechnology, and the National
Institutes of Health. The aims are to identify gaps and define
new opportunities that are logical and have the highest
likelihood of success. We believe it&#146;s a priority-setting
approach that will help us spend wisely to move science
forward.&quot;</p>
<p>Who can doubt that for Emily and Sandra, the search for a cure
is personal? They bring to their roles a commitment that is
common to all those who live with the disease. Such commitment is
the foundation of JDFI&#146;s success thus far, and the key to
improving the quality of life for people with diabetes &#151;
today, tomorrow, and the day after.&#133;</p>
<p>Voices of professionalism blended with passion: the research
scientists whose work JDFI believes &#151; knows &#151; will lead
to the cure&#133;As we prepare to take the lead in pushing
research from bench to bedside, from the laboratory to the
doctor&#146;s office, our focus must intensify. We must identify
the obstacles, the gaps in our knowledge which hold our progress
back and seek to overcome them. We must choose the most likely
paths to a cure for diabetes and its devastating complications,
and speed our way down these paths.</p>
<p>With us, along what we hope will be the last stage of our
journey, will be our most important partners &#151; our
researchers. &quot;When we began our search,&quot; says S. Robert
Levine, M.D., a member of the JDFI Board, the Research Committee
and Chair of the Government Relations Committee, &quot;we knew
very little about the causes and consequences of diabetes. But 27
years of research progress have added greatly to the diabetes
knowledge base. We are now on the threshold of a cure, ready to
move research advances from the laboratory bench to our loved
ones&#146; bedsides.&quot;</p>
<p>Dramatic clinical breakthroughs? They will come in beta cell
replacement, preventing and treating complications, arresting the
progress of the disease, as well as in early detection and
disease prevention. </p>
<p>The key to success in beta cell transplantation is to convince
the body to accept foreign cells, according to Ali Naji, M.D.,
Ph.D., at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr.
Naji, Chairman of JDFI&#146;s Medical Science Review Committee
and Medical Advisory Board, is one <br>
of the researchers examining this problem. Some transplantation
sites in the body are &quot;privileged,&quot; that is, shielded
from the immune system. One of these privileged sites, the
thymus, is responsible for teaching cells in the immune system
the difference between &quot;self&quot; and &quot;non-self.&quot;
Dr. Naji believes that if islet cells could be successfully
implanted in the thymus in order for the immune system to
recognize them as self, then they could be placed elsewhere in
the body and not be attacked. In addition, the patient would not
have to take immunosuppressant drugs, which can have adverse side
effects.</p>
<p>Already, scientific pioneers have returned with assurances
that their efforts will bring real help to real people. Leonard
Harrison, M.D., of the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Victoria,
Australia, cites tremendous progress in immunology research that
can lead to a number of areas of prevention. An example he points
out has the potential for blocking the self-destructive immune
response.</p>
<p>&quot;Insulin is the target of the auto-immune attack in
diabetes,&quot; Harrison says. &quot;We have found that if we
deliver insulin back to an individual who is at risk for
diabetes, it induces a protective immune response. The response
in turn blocks the destructive immune response that is destroying
the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.&quot;</p>
<p>&quot;We have seen that tight control of blood sugar is very
important to reduce or prevent complications,&quot; says Arthur
Rubenstein, M.D., Department of Medicine, University of Chicago
Hospital, &quot;but complications still occur, despite control.
So it is important that we introduce as fast as we can treatments
to prevent and treat heart disease, kidney disease and eye
disease. Already, there are new drugs in use or development that
will forestall kidney disease and that will enhance nerve growth
and stability. Beyond control and the treatment of complications,
we have also seen dramatic advances toward the cure of diabetes
through transplantation. There are many important avenues that
should lead rapidly to improving the lives of people with
diabetes.&quot;</p>
<p>There is also hopeful news in the field of genetic research,
this from John Todd, Ph.D., Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford
University: &quot;We are certain that a child who develops
diabetes does so because of a genetic susceptibility,&quot; he
says. &quot;An unknown series of environmental factors triggers
it. Now, we are beginning to pinpoint the susceptibility genes.
As we assemble the genetic jigsaw, we will be able to work out
ways to block their effect.&quot;</p>
<p>For some 27 years now, JDFI has been uniquely successful in
harnessing the discipline of science to our members&#146;
passionate belief that a cure can &#151; and will &#151; be
found. To speed the discovery of a cure, we ask that the
scientists funded by the organization continue to share that
passion.</p>
<p>The passion of parents of children with diabetes extends
beyond neighborhoods, beyond borders and boundaries&#133;Today,
JDFI is everywhere, united by its members&#146; single-minded
quest for a cure. Bridging oceans and political boundaries,
culture and languages, the organization takes strength from its
ever-renewing commitment to the children and adults with
diabetes.</p>
<p>In Melbourne, Australia, Sue Alberti vividly recalls the day
when a child in her family circle was diagnosed with diabetes.
&quot;It was July 13, 1982.&quot; The onset of the illness led to
Sue&#146;s present positions as a member of the JDFI Melbourne
chapter and of the Australian board, and a member of the
International Board. She was a 1997 recipient of the Order of
Australia Medal.</p>
<p>In Piedmont, North Carolina, Anne Hummel has a simple
explanation for her decision to become a co-founder of the
Piedmont Triad Chapter of JDFI: &quot;I wanted to make my
daughter&#146;s life better,&quot; she says. Following the grim
diagnosis for her 12-year-old, Anne found help at the other end
of our information hotline, 1-800-JDF-CURE. Since then, she has
helped build a dynamic chapter that provides much-needed funding
to fuel the search for a cure.</p>
<p>Buff Perry, co-founder of the Piedmont Triad Chapter, along
with Anne, also speaks matter-of-factly about her decision to
devote untold hours to the effort. &quot;My daughter, who is 25,
has had diabetes since the age of six,&quot; she says. &quot;When
she was small, I felt I was waiting for someone else to do
something about the disease. Now I&#146;m doing something about
it.&quot;</p>
<p>Across the Atlantic, in Liverpool, United Kingdom, Anne
Burrows similarly acknowledges that &quot;I realized I had to do
something for myself and my daughters,&quot; and the
&quot;something&quot; was to become involved with JDFI.
Anne&#146;s daughters, Emma and Lucy, who are now 20 and 13,
respectively, developed diabetes before their first birthdays.
Notes their mother: &quot;The work of the Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation International showed me that Emma and Lucy did have
futures &#151; ones that have been made brighter by
research.&quot;</p>
<p>In Toronto, where he serves as vice president of the JDFI
Canada Board of Directors and president of the Toronto Chapter,
Vince Brewerton relates that a routine annual physical led to the
diagnosis of his own diabetes at age 33. The former management
consultant considers himself fortunate in that &quot;if I had to
have diabetes, I&#146;m lucky to have it now that research has
made a lot of progress, and there&#146;s more to come.&quot;</p>
<p>In Portland, Oregon, attorney Katherine Cowan, whose
six-year-old daughter was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago,
is President of the Board of the Greater Portland Chapter. She
says, &quot;The appeal of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation for me
has been its focus on research. And our Government Relations work
helps keep the research going.&quot;</p>
<p>These and thousands of other people throughout the world are
united by sharing the founders&#146; overriding vision of the
role of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International.</p>
<p>A cure, and nothing less.</p>
<p>Speaking with a single voice, JDFI private and public partners
produce progress in research that will end the search&#133;No one
needs to be told that the critical element in JDFI&#146;s search
for a cure is the wondrous combination of private and public
partners who provide the dollars for research. Initially, many of
the private individuals and government agencies who come to our
cause might sign on for various reasons, but they stay for one
reason alone: they want to help us find &#151; or fund the search
that finds &#151; a cure.</p>
<p>&quot;Diabetes is the single largest chronic disease
represented here at Carolina Healthcare System&#146;s
facilities,&quot; says CEO Harry Nurkin, Ph.D. &quot;We&#146;re
committed to improving the long-term future of our patients, and
diabetes is counter-productive to that goal.</p>
<p>&quot;A former chapter president pressed us into service to
support a local Walk to Cure Diabetes,&quot; Nurkin says.
&quot;After a marathon round of meetings and pep rallies, I
learned just how widespread diabetes is and how it affects
families and friends.&quot;</p>
<p>Likewise, David Vandewater, Chief Operations Officer of
Columbia Healthcare Corp., fell into a Walk to Cure Diabetes
commitment made by a departing executive. &quot;The Juvenile
Diabetes Foundation&#146;s Nashville staff gave me all the
information I needed,&quot; he says. &quot;and made me feel
completely at home. I didn&#146;t think the Nashville target was
enough of a stretch, so I raised it. Seven hundred employees
walked last year.&quot;</p>
<p>A friend whose granddaughter has diabetes asked Garnett Smith,
President of Advance Auto Parts, to attend a Walk to Cure
Diabetes campaign breakfast. He went along, and some of his
employees went with him. &quot;When we returned from the meeting
and began to talk with other Advance employees, we found that
many of them have a family connection to diabetes. One of our
managers participated in the Walk with her daughter, who has
diabetes. I walked with them, and the five miles carried an
education with it.&quot;</p>
<p>Before my involvement in the Walk, I had only a vague
understanding of how devastating this disease is for children,
and that every child is potentially at risk,&quot; says Lynn
Horak, President of Norwest Bank of Iowa. &quot;After we became
involved, people began coming up to me saying, &#145;my child has
diabetes.&#146; Those people and their children are my customers
and future customers, and I need to do what I can to help find a
cure for the disease that controls their lives.&quot;</p>
<p>In addition to our private partners, our public partners have
worked with us to revolutionize a search for a cure. &quot;The
Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International did more than promote
groundbreaking research when it established its The Only Remedy
Is A Cure Campaign,&quot; says Sherry Benaroya, Campaign
Co-chair. &quot;It pioneered a unique partnership with
government, leveraging private research dollars by stimulating
increased spending by federal agencies.&quot;</p>
<p>Today, the organization collaborates closely with four
institutes of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and has
developed new relationships with the Department of Veterans
Affairs and the Medical Research Councils of Canada and
Australia. And throughout the world, the search for a cure has
picked up speed as public partners join in melding public and
private energies and dollars.</p>
<p>&quot;The bridge between the research bench and the
patient&#146;s bedside is the next major step toward a cure for
diabetes,&quot; said Kenneth W. Kizer, M.D., M.P.H. Under
Secretary for Health of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,
in an interview with Countdown Magazine, the diabetes research
publication of JDFI. &quot;We need to form a link to clinical
practice, to bring hope and help to individuals with
diabetes.&quot; He views the innovative public/private
partnership between JDFI and the Department of Veterans Affairs
as &quot;a creative and effective way to enhance critical
diabetes research efforts.&quot;</p>
<p>Creative. Effective. These are the kind of words that an
organization such as ours enjoys hearing, wants and needs to
hear. But everyone who toils at JDFI, whether for a few moments
or hours or through long days or longer years &#151; and everyone
who dreams at JDFI&#151;is aware that such words can only be
possible because of our private partners, who themselves keep two
other words in mind: Personal commitment.</p>
<p>These words, believed in by all of us, will help bring about
the end to our search. They&#146;ll help bring about a cure.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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Foundation International. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.<br>
The BETA SOCIETY, COUNTDOWN, CREATING A WORLD WITHOUT DIABETES,
THE DIABETES RESEARCH FOUNDATION, JDF, JUVENILE DIABETES
FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL, THE ONLY REMEDY IS A CURE, WALK FOR THE
CURE, 1-800-JDF-CURE and 1-800-WALK-JDF are Trademarks and
Service marks of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International. </b><br>
E-mail comments to </font><a href="mailto:info@jdfcure.com"><font size="2">info@jdfcure.com</font></a><font size="2"><br>
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