13 ms·

Patent application by USC: Fasting condition as dietary treatment of diabetes

86 points by sjcsjc 10y ago

katkattac 10y ago
This is only an application, not granted (yet). I think that "method" patents don't get enough scrutiny by the public. If you read claim one, what they are preventing is: anyone identifying someone with diabetes and then putting that person on a calorie restricted diet. It's not clear to me why the government should grant a monopoly on this technique, even from a theoretical standpoint.
- iplaw 10y ago
  It granted, indeed. Albeit with a slightly narrower claim scope. See my analysis of the issued independent claim.
teuobk 10y ago
The patent ended up being issued: https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790 https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790
anpk 10y ago
Does that mean people can't fast without violating the patent? How is that going to be enforced especially considering fasting is part of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism?
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  Somewhere in my innocent heart flickers the hope that patenting fasting wouldn't be possible even in a parallel universe where it's not part of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism or Buddhism...
  - kpil 10y ago
    ...or Judaism and Christianity ?
- iplaw 10y ago
  I really wish more people knew how to read a patent. These knee-jerk (incorrect) reactions only serve to generate hysteria.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, you can make/do a patented thing as an individual all you want, you just can't commercialize it.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    You are still infringing, but nobody is going to come after you unless you are doing commercial damage.
    - intrasight 10y ago
      At least in USA. See http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/crashcourse/rights/ http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/crashcourse/rights/
  - hanginghyena 10y ago
    That seems very anti-competitive. So basically, if fasting is a free treatment for diabetes, you can't promote it without paying these guys a royalty? Boooooo
    - hayavuk 10y ago
      Isn't that generally applicable to patents?
    - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
      You can probably promote it and they won't care. They will care if you run a thing that you charge health insurance companies for.
      - hanginghyena 10y ago
        Right but that's where this gets ridiculous. Telling a patient to fast is basically a clinical practice. Almost like checking blood pressure. No actual supplies needed, just behavioral counseling. By the same logic, could I patent checking blood pressure?
- hayavuk 10y ago
  > Does that mean people can't fast without violating the patent? From the language, it would suggest that you'd have to administer this as a treatment for diabetes. And it's a very specific form of fasting, not fasting in general.
torkable 10y ago
how can you patent eating lol
iplaw 10y ago
Two important considerations: 1. This link is to the as-filed application. The recited claims are not what ultimately issued. Linking to the application rather than the granted patent is dubious. https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790 https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790 2. A patent practitioner will utilize method claims in order to apply something known in the art, such as general fasting, in a new and novel manner. This does NOT cover plain-ole fasting. You can fast without violating this patent. What you cannot do without a license to the patent is perform the method in its entirety. The independent claim recites: 1. A method of treating a symptom of diabetes, the method comprising: identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction, the subject having a normal caloric intake; and administering multiple cycles of a diet protocol to the subject wherein a fasting mimicking diet is provided for a first time period and a re-feeding diet is provided for a second time period, the fasting mimicking diet providing less than about 50% of the normal caloric intake of the subject with both protein restriction and sugar restriction and the re-feeding diet providing 60-100 percent of the normal caloric intake of the subject, depending on a need to lose weight wherein the first time period is from 2 days to 6 days and the second time period is from 7 days to 85 days. The take-aways form the claim language are: A. This is a method of treating a symptom of diabetes. In order to infringe, you must be treating diabetes by performing the method. B. You must actively identify a subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction, and the subject must have a normal caloric intake. If you are an individual who is fasting to treat your diabetes, you don't infringe by performing this method. You did not identify a subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction. You are merely fasting. C. You must administer multiple cycles of this fasting and refeeding, within the exact caloric-intake ranges required by the claim, and within the exact time frame required by the claim. TL;DR: It's toothless for all except treatment centers which diagnose and identify this "subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction" which could potentially prescribe this very specific dietary regime to "treat a symptom of diabetes."
- DrScump 10y ago
  "Linking to the application rather than the granted patent is spreading misinformation and is click-bait" This strikes me as unduly harsh for an honest mistake at worst. Updated information is always preferable, but I have a hard time seeing any bad intent in the original comment.
wutusmuck 10y ago
Valter D. Longo and Chia-Wei Cheng are the "inventors". This is a blatant attempt at taking advantage of the indifference of the uspo and the ignorance of the public to what is going on at the uspo. This is despicable and I think we as somewhat more informed participants in this little thing called civilization need to do more to have our voices heard and vilify those who keep taking advantage of society. This includes those that at the uspo that are actually reading these patents and issuing them. Can anyone find out who they are? On another note, I wonder if there is any form of moral hazard in the uspo office, possibly in the form of workers being incentivized to issue patents, or workers from certain companies going to work for patent offices that are sought out by those companies for their patents. Maybe offices or workers are granting patents for the sake of being able to show a high number of patents issued at the end of the year. Maybe this makes them look good when it comes time for performance review. idk. I do know that something needs to change, a change that hopefully adds transparency and holds people responsible. Should we write our congress representatives? (lol) edit: wording, punctuation, hoopla
- iplaw 10y ago
  This post shows that you, too, are a member of "the public" which is ignorant "to what is going on at the uspo." It's the USPTO, by the way. Can anyone find out who they are? Of course you can. You can find the examiner who reviewed this patent, you can find the references cited in the rejection, which precipitated the amendments to the claims. You can even find his phone number and email address. I wonder if there is any form of moral hazard in the uspo office, possibly in the form of workers being incentivized to issue patents They are incentivized to reject applications multiple times, to force an RCE, etc. via a point-based performance metric. Prosecuting a patent is not a walk in the park. Rejections get you points. Allowances do not get you points. Maybe offices or workers are granting patents for the sake of being able to show a high number of patents issued at the end of the year. This shot in the dark is totally baseless, and incorrect. I do know that something needs to change, a change that hopefully adds transparency and holds people responsible. How transparent do you want it? Do you want every office action made public? Do you want all communication between the examiner and the applicant to be made public? Do you want all responses to the rejections and references asserted as prior art for purposes of anticipation (novelty) or obviousness (inventive step) to be listed out for the entire world to see? OH WAIT. IT ALREADY IS.
DrScump 10y ago
More on FMD: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/diet/why-weve-all-been-doing-the-fast-diet-wrong/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/diet/why-weve-all-been-... https://thequantifiedbody.net/fast-mimicking-diet/ https://thequantifiedbody.net/fast-mimicking-diet/
PaulHoule 10y ago
It doesn't seem too different from the Atkins diet. Bodybuilders do all kinds of cycled carbohydrate restriction although they don't usually lowball their protein intake.
josaka 10y ago
This issued as US patent 9,386,790, so it's not just an application. Most can keep fasting intermittently without infringing at least claim 1, typically the broadest claim. If you don't have (and know you have) "pancreatic beta cell destruction," you don't infringe. Even then, if you only cut to 51% of your normal intake or more, you don't infringe. Even then, if you restrict sugar but not protein, you don't infringe. Even then, if your re-feed at greater than 100% of your normal diet (which is common), you don't infringe.
- dsp1234 10y ago
  For those who want to research this further (including full claim text, history, who examined it, images of the submitted documents, etc): 1.) Navigate to http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair 2.) Enter the CAPTCHA if prompted 3.) In the "Search for Application" form, select the radio button for 'patent number' 4.) Type '9,386,790', without quotes, into the 'Enter Number' text box. 5.) Click on the SEARCH button. This will take you to the patent page with each of the tabs having different information about the patent. If you get a notification that the system is busy, just wait a few seconds and try again. These same steps with different patent and application numbers can be used in the future if you run into other US patent related inquiries.
- theorique 10y ago
  Could a private citizen following a dietary protocol actually be sued for infringement of a patent? Seems absurd, not to mention highly unenforceable.
  - aurizon 10y ago
    This patent will be used as the basis for a racket that preys on health cranks, naturopaths etc that will sentence their followers to a slow death
  - bdowling 10y ago
    For a claim to be literally infringed, every element of the claim must be present in the allegedly infringing use. Since the first element of the first claim is "identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms...", that element would need to be present in the private citizen's use as well. A single private citizen following a dietary protocol is probably not "identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms..." Further, the language "administering multiple cycles of a diet protocol to the subject" seems to imply that multiple persons are needed in order to carry out this method, so it could be argued that a single private citizen could not infringe the claim by himself in any circumstances. The same reasoning applies to all of the other claims since all of the claims as issued depend from claim 1 or from claims 16, 25, or 28, which have similar limiting language.
apathy 10y ago
Not just diabetes, it appears to enhance the efficacy (such as it is) of cytotoxic chemotherapy as well. Not sure how someone would actually file an infringement lawsuit for not eating, though. This therapy has a little tiny bit of prior art (e.g. several hundred million years). Patent applications and prosecutions are difficult, much more difficult than I think most realize. Try it yourself (be sure to have at least a spare $13000 lying around) and come back in a year or so with your scars, if you're one of the folks randomly sniping about the process. It's far, far, far from perfect; but it evolves (see for example Myriad, Prometheus, and Alice for important recent cases) and the worst mistakes do get corrected. JMHO
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  They wouldn't file infringement suits for not eating. They'd file them against people who build a business out of controlling the diet of diabetic patients in this particular way. And given that it's been studied, health insurance companies are willing to pay for diabetic patients to have their diet controlled in this particular way. IMO, it's not an attempt to monopolize the results of the research. Rather, it's an attempt to monopolize extracting money out of health insurance companies that are only willing to pay for proven treatments.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    It's probably my ignorance and preconceived notions showing but this seems so bizarre when contrasted with something like medication. If patenting methods is possible could I patent a particular type of high intensity interval training?
shmerl 10y ago
How can diet be patented to begin with? Can anyone patent human behaviors? It doesn't make any sense.
- a3n 10y ago
  Not a patent dude, and I just skimmed. The things that stood out to me were "method of identifying," which is not just the diet, but knowing you have beta cell damage, i.e. "the dude has diabetes." And also, a list of nutrients seemed relevant. Overall though ... WTF?
danm07 10y ago
Is it just me or is fasting as an intellectual property a ludicrous idea?
andrewclunn 10y ago
"Your honor, by his own admission this man hasn't eaten in days. He owes me money!"
bcheung 10y ago
What's the point of this patent? Stay away from food and insulin resistance goes down. Duh. Everyone knows this. And you can't exactly go around sending people cease and desist letters saying "You're not eating, you're violating our patent." What's the incentive to even file this?
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  Health insurance companies will pay for proven-effective diabetes treatments. This prevents competitors from free-riding on the effectiveness proof of this diabetes treatment to charge money to health insurance companies.
duaneb 10y ago
What does this even mean as a patent? What is this protecting?
aurizon 10y ago
Before insulin was discovered, all manner of restricted diets were tried - all they did was postpone the inevitable. A detailed search of prior art from 1800 should kick this application to the curb.
samfisher83 10y ago
http://centennial.rucares.org/index.php?page=Dietary_Therapy_Diabetes http://centennial.rucares.org/index.php?page=Dietary_Therapy... Starvation is the way they used to treat the disease in the early part of the twentieth century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen Allen was not the first person to recommend treatment of diabetes by diet; as Ramachandran and Viswanathan (1998) point out, dietary treatment of diabetes mellitus was used in ancient Egypt as long ago as 3,500 B.C., and was being used in India about 2,500 years ago. These authors note that in the eighteenth century, John Rollo had observed that glycosuria in diabetics could be reduced if sufferers of diabetes mellitus reduced the quantity of their food consumed. However, Allen became famous in his own day for his recommendations, and Allen and his co-workers published their work on the diabetic diet in 1919, in a work entitled "Total Dietary Regulation in the Treatment of Diabetes". Today, however, diabetologists would take quite different views on this subject to those promoted by Allen. Indeed, Joslin, in 1922, suggested different diet recommendations to those of Allen, suggesting a reduction of fat rather than carbohydrate, with the overall goal of reduction in calorie intake (Hockaday, 1981). Allen has been named as one of the two leading diabetologists, along with Elliott P. Joslin, in the period 1910 to 1920. Apparently it was used way before that period as well.
openclosed 10y ago
Someone, anyone... please patent a process to invalidate patents like these.

86 points by sjcsjc 10y ago

This is only an application, not granted (yet). I think that "method" patents don't get enough scrutiny by the public. If you read claim one, what they are preventing is: anyone identifying someone with diabetes and then putting that person on a calorie restricted diet. It's not clear to me why the government should grant a monopoly on this technique, even from a theoretical standpoint.

iplaw 10y ago
It granted, indeed. Albeit with a slightly narrower claim scope. See my analysis of the issued independent claim.

teuobk 10y ago

The patent ended up being issued: https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790 https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790

anpk 10y ago

Does that mean people can't fast without violating the patent? How is that going to be enforced especially considering fasting is part of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism?

nothrabannosir 10y ago
Somewhere in my innocent heart flickers the hope that patenting fasting wouldn't be possible even in a parallel universe where it's not part of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism or Buddhism...
- kpil 10y ago
  ...or Judaism and Christianity ?
iplaw 10y ago
I really wish more people knew how to read a patent. These knee-jerk (incorrect) reactions only serve to generate hysteria.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
If I'm not mistaken, you can make/do a patented thing as an individual all you want, you just can't commercialize it.
- intrasight 10y ago
  You are still infringing, but nobody is going to come after you unless you are doing commercial damage.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    At least in USA. See http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/crashcourse/rights/ http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/crashcourse/rights/
- hanginghyena 10y ago
  That seems very anti-competitive. So basically, if fasting is a free treatment for diabetes, you can't promote it without paying these guys a royalty? Boooooo
  - hayavuk 10y ago
    Isn't that generally applicable to patents?
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    You can probably promote it and they won't care. They will care if you run a thing that you charge health insurance companies for.
    - hanginghyena 10y ago
      Right but that's where this gets ridiculous. Telling a patient to fast is basically a clinical practice. Almost like checking blood pressure. No actual supplies needed, just behavioral counseling. By the same logic, could I patent checking blood pressure?
hayavuk 10y ago
> Does that mean people can't fast without violating the patent? From the language, it would suggest that you'd have to administer this as a treatment for diabetes. And it's a very specific form of fasting, not fasting in general.

torkable 10y ago

how can you patent eating lol

iplaw 10y ago

Two important considerations: 1. This link is to the as-filed application. The recited claims are not what ultimately issued. Linking to the application rather than the granted patent is dubious. https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790 https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790 2. A patent practitioner will utilize method claims in order to apply something known in the art, such as general fasting, in a new and novel manner. This does NOT cover plain-ole fasting. You can fast without violating this patent. What you cannot do without a license to the patent is perform the method in its entirety. The independent claim recites: 1. A method of treating a symptom of diabetes, the method comprising: identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction, the subject having a normal caloric intake; and administering multiple cycles of a diet protocol to the subject wherein a fasting mimicking diet is provided for a first time period and a re-feeding diet is provided for a second time period, the fasting mimicking diet providing less than about 50% of the normal caloric intake of the subject with both protein restriction and sugar restriction and the re-feeding diet providing 60-100 percent of the normal caloric intake of the subject, depending on a need to lose weight wherein the first time period is from 2 days to 6 days and the second time period is from 7 days to 85 days. The take-aways form the claim language are: A. This is a method of treating a symptom of diabetes. In order to infringe, you must be treating diabetes by performing the method. B. You must actively identify a subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction, and the subject must have a normal caloric intake. If you are an individual who is fasting to treat your diabetes, you don't infringe by performing this method. You did not identify a subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction. You are merely fasting. C. You must administer multiple cycles of this fasting and refeeding, within the exact caloric-intake ranges required by the claim, and within the exact time frame required by the claim. TL;DR: It's toothless for all except treatment centers which diagnose and identify this "subject exhibiting symptoms caused by pancreatic beta cell destruction" which could potentially prescribe this very specific dietary regime to "treat a symptom of diabetes."

DrScump 10y ago
"Linking to the application rather than the granted patent is spreading misinformation and is click-bait" This strikes me as unduly harsh for an honest mistake at worst. Updated information is always preferable, but I have a hard time seeing any bad intent in the original comment.

wutusmuck 10y ago

Valter D. Longo and Chia-Wei Cheng are the "inventors". This is a blatant attempt at taking advantage of the indifference of the uspo and the ignorance of the public to what is going on at the uspo. This is despicable and I think we as somewhat more informed participants in this little thing called civilization need to do more to have our voices heard and vilify those who keep taking advantage of society. This includes those that at the uspo that are actually reading these patents and issuing them. Can anyone find out who they are? On another note, I wonder if there is any form of moral hazard in the uspo office, possibly in the form of workers being incentivized to issue patents, or workers from certain companies going to work for patent offices that are sought out by those companies for their patents. Maybe offices or workers are granting patents for the sake of being able to show a high number of patents issued at the end of the year. Maybe this makes them look good when it comes time for performance review. idk. I do know that something needs to change, a change that hopefully adds transparency and holds people responsible. Should we write our congress representatives? (lol) edit: wording, punctuation, hoopla

iplaw 10y ago
This post shows that you, too, are a member of "the public" which is ignorant "to what is going on at the uspo." It's the USPTO, by the way. Can anyone find out who they are? Of course you can. You can find the examiner who reviewed this patent, you can find the references cited in the rejection, which precipitated the amendments to the claims. You can even find his phone number and email address. I wonder if there is any form of moral hazard in the uspo office, possibly in the form of workers being incentivized to issue patents They are incentivized to reject applications multiple times, to force an RCE, etc. via a point-based performance metric. Prosecuting a patent is not a walk in the park. Rejections get you points. Allowances do not get you points. Maybe offices or workers are granting patents for the sake of being able to show a high number of patents issued at the end of the year. This shot in the dark is totally baseless, and incorrect. I do know that something needs to change, a change that hopefully adds transparency and holds people responsible. How transparent do you want it? Do you want every office action made public? Do you want all communication between the examiner and the applicant to be made public? Do you want all responses to the rejections and references asserted as prior art for purposes of anticipation (novelty) or obviousness (inventive step) to be listed out for the entire world to see? OH WAIT. IT ALREADY IS.

DrScump 10y ago

More on FMD: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/diet/why-weve-all-been-doing-the-fast-diet-wrong/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/diet/why-weve-all-been-... https://thequantifiedbody.net/fast-mimicking-diet/ https://thequantifiedbody.net/fast-mimicking-diet/

PaulHoule 10y ago

It doesn't seem too different from the Atkins diet. Bodybuilders do all kinds of cycled carbohydrate restriction although they don't usually lowball their protein intake.

josaka 10y ago

This issued as US patent 9,386,790, so it's not just an application. Most can keep fasting intermittently without infringing at least claim 1, typically the broadest claim. If you don't have (and know you have) "pancreatic beta cell destruction," you don't infringe. Even then, if you only cut to 51% of your normal intake or more, you don't infringe. Even then, if you restrict sugar but not protein, you don't infringe. Even then, if your re-feed at greater than 100% of your normal diet (which is common), you don't infringe.

dsp1234 10y ago
For those who want to research this further (including full claim text, history, who examined it, images of the submitted documents, etc): 1.) Navigate to http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair 2.) Enter the CAPTCHA if prompted 3.) In the "Search for Application" form, select the radio button for 'patent number' 4.) Type '9,386,790', without quotes, into the 'Enter Number' text box. 5.) Click on the SEARCH button. This will take you to the patent page with each of the tabs having different information about the patent. If you get a notification that the system is busy, just wait a few seconds and try again. These same steps with different patent and application numbers can be used in the future if you run into other US patent related inquiries.
theorique 10y ago
Could a private citizen following a dietary protocol actually be sued for infringement of a patent? Seems absurd, not to mention highly unenforceable.
- aurizon 10y ago
  This patent will be used as the basis for a racket that preys on health cranks, naturopaths etc that will sentence their followers to a slow death
- bdowling 10y ago
  For a claim to be literally infringed, every element of the claim must be present in the allegedly infringing use. Since the first element of the first claim is "identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms...", that element would need to be present in the private citizen's use as well. A single private citizen following a dietary protocol is probably not "identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms..." Further, the language "administering multiple cycles of a diet protocol to the subject" seems to imply that multiple persons are needed in order to carry out this method, so it could be argued that a single private citizen could not infringe the claim by himself in any circumstances. The same reasoning applies to all of the other claims since all of the claims as issued depend from claim 1 or from claims 16, 25, or 28, which have similar limiting language.

apathy 10y ago

Not just diabetes, it appears to enhance the efficacy (such as it is) of cytotoxic chemotherapy as well. Not sure how someone would actually file an infringement lawsuit for not eating, though. This therapy has a little tiny bit of prior art (e.g. several hundred million years). Patent applications and prosecutions are difficult, much more difficult than I think most realize. Try it yourself (be sure to have at least a spare $13000 lying around) and come back in a year or so with your scars, if you're one of the folks randomly sniping about the process. It's far, far, far from perfect; but it evolves (see for example Myriad, Prometheus, and Alice for important recent cases) and the worst mistakes do get corrected. JMHO

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
They wouldn't file infringement suits for not eating. They'd file them against people who build a business out of controlling the diet of diabetic patients in this particular way. And given that it's been studied, health insurance companies are willing to pay for diabetic patients to have their diet controlled in this particular way. IMO, it's not an attempt to monopolize the results of the research. Rather, it's an attempt to monopolize extracting money out of health insurance companies that are only willing to pay for proven treatments.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  It's probably my ignorance and preconceived notions showing but this seems so bizarre when contrasted with something like medication. If patenting methods is possible could I patent a particular type of high intensity interval training?

shmerl 10y ago

How can diet be patented to begin with? Can anyone patent human behaviors? It doesn't make any sense.

a3n 10y ago
Not a patent dude, and I just skimmed. The things that stood out to me were "method of identifying," which is not just the diet, but knowing you have beta cell damage, i.e. "the dude has diabetes." And also, a list of nutrients seemed relevant. Overall though ... WTF?

danm07 10y ago

Is it just me or is fasting as an intellectual property a ludicrous idea?

andrewclunn 10y ago

"Your honor, by his own admission this man hasn't eaten in days. He owes me money!"

bcheung 10y ago

What's the point of this patent? Stay away from food and insulin resistance goes down. Duh. Everyone knows this. And you can't exactly go around sending people cease and desist letters saying "You're not eating, you're violating our patent." What's the incentive to even file this?

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
Health insurance companies will pay for proven-effective diabetes treatments. This prevents competitors from free-riding on the effectiveness proof of this diabetes treatment to charge money to health insurance companies.

duaneb 10y ago

What does this even mean as a patent? What is this protecting?

aurizon 10y ago

Before insulin was discovered, all manner of restricted diets were tried - all they did was postpone the inevitable. A detailed search of prior art from 1800 should kick this application to the curb.

samfisher83 10y ago

http://centennial.rucares.org/index.php?page=Dietary_Therapy_Diabetes http://centennial.rucares.org/index.php?page=Dietary_Therapy... Starvation is the way they used to treat the disease in the early part of the twentieth century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen Allen was not the first person to recommend treatment of diabetes by diet; as Ramachandran and Viswanathan (1998) point out, dietary treatment of diabetes mellitus was used in ancient Egypt as long ago as 3,500 B.C., and was being used in India about 2,500 years ago. These authors note that in the eighteenth century, John Rollo had observed that glycosuria in diabetics could be reduced if sufferers of diabetes mellitus reduced the quantity of their food consumed. However, Allen became famous in his own day for his recommendations, and Allen and his co-workers published their work on the diabetic diet in 1919, in a work entitled "Total Dietary Regulation in the Treatment of Diabetes". Today, however, diabetologists would take quite different views on this subject to those promoted by Allen. Indeed, Joslin, in 1922, suggested different diet recommendations to those of Allen, suggesting a reduction of fat rather than carbohydrate, with the overall goal of reduction in calorie intake (Hockaday, 1981). Allen has been named as one of the two leading diabetologists, along with Elliott P. Joslin, in the period 1910 to 1920. Apparently it was used way before that period as well.

openclosed 10y ago

Someone, anyone... please patent a process to invalidate patents like these.