Reinventing diabetes: classification, division and the geneticization of disease

This paper shows how diabetes underwent geneticization to become the exemplar of a complex genetic disorder. My analysis focuses on the debates that took place in the mid-to-late-1970s over the classification of, and the role of genetic factors in, diabetes. By exploring the work of an influential researcher and clinician, Andrew Cudworth, I show how the discourse around diabetes constructed it as a genetic condition divided into different types on the grounds of aetiology. I then track this classification over time as it became the current, extremely splintered classification system.