Please read the report before "Having Your Say". News reports are always short, but the ones I've heard today on Radio 4 have distinguished between the types of diabetes, and certainlt not implied that Type 1 is "self inflicted" - although silent on the issue that not all Type 2 is "self inflicted", either. The web report that started this thread, is very clear:
"Of more than 42,642 people who were newly diagnosed with the disease between 1996 and 2005, just over 1,250 had the inherited "insulin-dependent" type 1 diabetes, and more than 41,000 had later-onset type 2 disease, which is linked to lifestyle.
While the numbers of new cases of type 1 diabetes remained fairly constant over the decade, the numbers of new cases of type 2 diabetes did not.
These shot up from 2.60 to 4.31 cases per 1,000 patient years, equivalent to an increase of 69% over the decade.
The researchers from Spain and Sweden who analysed the data from almost five million medical records say the trends are not due to increased screening or the UK's ageing population, but from rising obesity rates."
"Over the course of the study, the proportion of patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes who were obese increased by a fifth."
In epidemiology, certain terms, such as rates, incidence, prevalence etc have very specific meanings - it took a whole term of half day of lectures & computer statistics practicals per week during my MSc. Unfortunately, very few journalists have that kind of training.