The author, displaying the #pinksocks gifted to her by Colin Hung, CMO and Editor Healthcare IT Today, Chief Editor Swaay.Health and podcast host.
Pink.
What does the colour pink make you think of? It might make you think of activism, acceptance, awareness and allyship based on how it has been adopted by various groups around the world.
Pink makes me think of the American singer, songwriter and activist P!nk. I’m a fan of her music and her efforts to raise funds for a variety of causes, especially feeding children, protecting animals and protecting human rights.
Pink – the colour not the person – also makes me think of Pink Shirt Day, an annual event against bullying that takes place in February and has its origins in Nova Scotia, Canada. The day grew from an act of solidarity and kindness when two senior high school students distributed pink shirts to their classmates after a grade 9 student was harassed for wearing a pink shirt to school. It began in 2007, has spread around the world, and has raised millions to support youth anti-bullying programs.
There is the International Day of Pink, which is also anti-bullying, but it is specific to bullying of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. It occurs in April. As Pride Month is being celebrated around the world this June, and Toronto’s Pride parade is taking place this weekend (June 29, 2025), it’s a good time to consider measures to end bullying of the queer community.
In case you missed it, this seems like the right time and place to share a blog I wrote last year about STEM and Pride that features “STEM superstars who are openly ‘out’” (quoting myself) and facts and stats about discrimination in the workplace towards LGBTQ STEM professionals. Please take a moment to read it.
#pinksocks and Eric Topol
Recently, I became aware of the #pinksocks movement. Already 10 years old, #pinksocks is about giving and making connections with people. It began in health care, but has expanded to other sectors and prioritizes helping teachers raise kind humans. Over 300,000 people strong, the non-profit group strives to change the world “from the ground up, with heart, speak, hugs and gifting.” In addition, it’s all about “working together to activate solutions that help us move forward with love and kindness. Politics, bureaucracies, and legacy systems have unfortunately done the polar opposite of what each us (sic) as humans want….which is to be connected!”
The #pinksocks movement (recipients of the pink socks are encouraged to post a photo on social media receiving the socks and using the #pinksocks hashtag) has a lovely origin story, and is all about creating a global community of empathy, caring and love by giving away pink socks, not dissimilar to the teen boys in Nova Scotia who spent their own money to purchase pink shirts and give them out to their male classmates to show support for the grade 9 student.
Interestingly, #pinksocks Founders Nick Adkins and Andrew Richards gifted the first pair of socks to Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a professor of molecular medicine and Executive Vice President at the Scripps Research Institute.
Dr. Topol requires little introduction. He was named to the TIME100 Health list of the most influential people in health in 2024. You will find him under the heading “Leaders” and beneath his name it says “Scientific translator.” In addition to being a bestselling author, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Medscape and publishes the Substack newsletter, Ground Truths, with 174,000 subscribers. In May, his book Super Agers was published. Already a New York Times bestseller, the guide is “an evidence-based approach to longevity” that speaks to how new treatments will combat chronic diseases like diabetes/obesity, cancers, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases to help more of us become centenarians.
Curing diabetes
Of course, many of these treatments will involve cell and gene therapies. This past weekend, the media were reporting that Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ allogeneic human stem cell-derived islet cell therapy, Zimislecel, was showing “unprecedented” data in a small Phase I/II study of patients who suffer from severe hypoglycemic events, which means they have dangerously low blood sugar levels that can induce seizures, comas and even death. Fierce Biotech wrote that the stem-cell-derived islets were engrafted successfully to all 12 patients, and the 10 who lived through the trial no longer required insulin replacement therapy a year later. The two patients who died did not do so from taking Zimislecel.
James Shapiro, Canada Research Chair in Transplant Surgery and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Alberta, said the outcome was “spectacular.”
“This is a major advance and a major milestone along the journey towards a cure,” he said to Canadian Reviews. Dr. Shapiro, along with his colleagues at the University of Alberta, published a groundbreaking paper in 2000 that described a method they developed for transplanting islet cells from deceased donors into type 1 diabetes patients. It is known as the Edmonton Protocol. Canadian researchers have played a pivotal role in advancing diabetes treatments.
Ideally, I would have ended this blog post with a video of P!nk singing about diabetes to bring everything full circle. While some of her lyrics use medical imagery and metaphors, and she talks about pain and healing, she has let me down. (I still love her life-affirming anthem “Never Gonna Not Dance Again,” which is all about making choices, being resilient and living with joy, a nice tie-in to the Pride references above.)
However, another popular singer did compose a song about diabetes. Watch Nick Jonas reflect on his type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Hopefully he and many other diabetics are smiling with the news from the weekend.
Stacey Johnson
Latest posts by Stacey Johnson (see all)
- Right Turn: #pinksocks, diabetes news and other ramblings - June 24, 2025
- Right Turn: Some takeaways from Advanced Therapies Week 2025 - January 31, 2025
- Right Turn: The top 10 most-read blog posts in 2024 - January 2, 2025
Thank you!
Nice job Ms. Johnson!