General Discussion

I'm 73. We saw our family doctor once a year, mainly to get vaccinations, and an update on height and weight. I think one of the kids in my grade school had diabetes and took insulin shots. The only reason I know is because the teacher told us why the kid had to leave the classroom occasionally. I didn't hear of any other kids who had type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

People with Type 2 diabetes were generally short-lived before the discovery of insulin and the first injection for a human in the 1920s. Maybe people with Type 1 diabetes didn't get as many chances to pass the disease along until after the life-saving, Nobel prize winning research started saving and lengthening lives.

I never heard of autism until I was in my 30s. I never heard of any of the diagnoses of mental disabilities or mental illness that we hear so much about today. Maybe that's because mental health wasn't studied until Freud, Jung and others started examining human behavior, not more than 125 years ago. Kids that needed special attention were lumped together, and, while a couple of teachers tried to explain to us why they were special, and that we should be kind, most kids in the mainstream classes weren't and the special ed. kids were mocked and shamed by people who probably grew up to be rwnj and asses.

rfk and his family got the best health care available and probably lived sheltered and exclusive lives, where illness and disability were either far removed or sanitized. Just because he didn't see illness or live with it, doesn't mean it wasn't part of the human condition. rkf is an entitled rich boy who squandered his chances and tarnished his family's good name as he destroyed his own health and mental abilities.