Ouch, Pfizer is getting hit hard on what appears to be the impending commercial failure of Exubera, the first-ever market-ready inhalable insulin. On Monday, BrandWeek (the marketing industry’s premiere weekly publication) called it the “Billion-Dollar Bong“:

“Last year, Pfizer paid Sanofi-Aventis $1.4 billion for Exubera, a new inhaled insulin product for diabetics that Pfizer forecast would produce $2 billion in sales every year.

Meet Alberto Pugliese, M.D., a Research Associate Professor of Medicine, Immunology and Microbiology, and Head of the Immunogenetics Program at the Diabetes Research Institute in Miami, FL.  He was scheduled to host a chat on “Reversing Autoimmunity” on the DiabetesTalkFest site on Feb. 8, but some technical difficulties prevented him from logging on.  So he was kind enough to talk with us all via the DiabetesMine.com community here.

Some valuable nuggets I unearthed last week:

* Anyone heard of the new print magazine called Diabetes Explorer?  It’s a bright, colorful 6x/year glossy that focuses on “brief, useful ‘hands-on’ articles,” editor Kathy Spain tells me.  Looks pretty neat, although I was surprised to learn that anyone’s launching a new paper-based publication in this increasingly digital age.

The day unimagined has arrived:  I am a pumper.  I am woman, I wear Pod.  I can’t believe I haven’t injected myself in 3 entire days! 

So far it’s so existence-altering, I hardly know where to begin…  In fact, I’m trying to temper my enthusiasm, so I don’t peter out too fast. Meaning I’m reserving my big Happy Dance for when I really start to see results.

Mark Sisson’s Daily Apple blog carries the tagline: “Doing my part to piss off the self-righteous health establishment.” Obviously, he prides himself on stirring the pot — or shaking the tree, as his metaphor would have it.

(original author unknown)

If you open it, close it.

If you drop it, pick it up.

If you empty it, fill it up.

If you make it messy, clean it up.

If you wear it, put it back.

If you borrow it, return it.

I’ve shared this tidbit with some of you already: whenever my girls and I are having a bit of relaxed fun, laughing and taking things lightly, my feisty 7-year-old perks up with a sideways grin and says, “Mommy, are you in the middle?  You seem like you’re in the middle!”

Hello All, and Welcome Back to the Diabetic Partner Follies, our sharing forum for partners of PWDs.  Sometimes both partners have diabetes, and things get particularly hairy — especially when one partner is guilty of D-neglect.  You think that’s only bad news for the affected individual?  Think again:

Happy Valentine’s Day, Dears.

(photo courtesy of the Diabetes Made Visible folks on Flickr.  Love you all!)

Especially for us PWDs, a few V-day treats without the actual glucose:

The mainstream media and even the Feds have caught on: blogs and podcasts and social networking websites are not only changing the communications landscape, but they might have an impact on people’s HEALTH as well.  See the recent Wall St. Journal story by my buddy Laura Landro (OK, “buddy” might be an overstatement, but she did contact me while researching this one