Two years ago, my 5-year-old grandson was rushed to the hospital, seriously ill. The diagnosis was Type 1 diabetes. For those of you, like me, who don’t know the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, Type 1 affects mainly children and adolescents, when their bodies just stop producing insulin. This means that in order to stay alive, they must take insulin every time they eat. Not only that, but they must calculate precisely how many carbohydrates they are ingesting and give the correct amount of insulin, then wait for it to enter their bloodstream before they eat. Every time they eat, every day of their lives. There is no cure. You can imagine the challenge that is for a parent of a young child.
Now, Elon Musk has suddenly decided to fire members of a small team at the Food and Drug Administration that is reviewing new and better ways to get that insulin into children. Imagine being a parent of such a child and knowing that the world’s richest man has just made it more difficult and much slower for the FDA to approve such devices.
And this is only one example of the harm he is doing. This is not about ferreting out fraud and waste, this is arbitrary and capricious use of power. It must stop. Elon must go.
Alison Jones
Los Osos
This article appears in Weddings 2025.