THOMAS v. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

THE PREVENTION of the vascular disease accompanying long-term diabetes mellitus is the most important problem in diabetes at the present time. The importance of this problem is dramatized by the following statistics from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Policy Holder Statistics and those of the Joslin Clinic for 1954. Diabetic coma accounted for 4.8% of all deaths in diabetic patients among the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company policy holders and 0.7% amongst the deaths of diabetics in the Joslin Clinic group. Eighty-three per cent of the deaths in diabetics in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company group were due to vascular changes. The comparable figure for the Joslin Clinic group is 72%. Table I shows the figures in tabular form. It has been shown that, whatever other factors there may be in the causation of the vascular components of diabetes, these degenerative manifestations do increase with increasing length of survival with diabetes mellitus. There seems to be general agreement on this fact. Therefore, [SEE TABLE I IN SOURCE PDF.] the increase in vascular manifestations associated with diabetes would be expected in association with the decline of deaths from coma and the survival of diabetics for an appreciable period of time. The emotionalism aroused in the proponents of the various regimens to prevent vascular changes in diabetes mellitus makes it difficult to ascertain the facts about this problem but at the same time emphasizes its importance. An impartial review is needed of what is known about the etiology and prevention of these dread manifestations of diabetes mellitus. That is the main purpose of this article. To do this properly will require consideration of many factors related to the disease.

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Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower

Manhattan Skyscrapers ◽

10.1007/1-56898-652-1_6 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 13-14 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Life Insurance ◽

Insurance Company ◽

Life Insurance Company ◽

Metropolitan Life Insurance

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The Social Survey, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and the Beginnings of the US Public Health Service’s Sickness Surveys

American Journal of Public Health ◽

10.2105/ajph.2021.306454 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. e1-e9

Author(s):

Mónica García

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Life Insurance ◽

Industrial Relations ◽

Insurance Company ◽

Life Insurance Company ◽

The Social ◽

The Us ◽

Inability To Work ◽

Definition Of ◽

Metropolitan Life Insurance

The earliest sickness survey of the US Public Health Service, which started in 1915, was the Service’s first socioeconomic study of an industrial community. It was also the first to define illness as a person’s inability to work. The survey incorporated the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s definition of illness, which, instead of sickness rates, focused on duration of illness as a proxy of time lost from work. This kind of survey took place in the broader context of the reform movements of the Progressive Era and the social surveys conducted in the United States, which led to the creation of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, where the Service’s sickness survey originated. The Service’s focus on the socioeconomic classification of families and definition of illness as the inability to work enabled it to show the strong link between poverty and illness among industrial workers. The leader of the survey, Edgar Sydenstricker, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company came up with new ways to measure the health of the population, which also influenced the Service’s studies of the effects of the Great Depression on public health and the National Health Survey of 1935–1936. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print October 28, 2021: e1–e9. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306454 )

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