04:05 PM CDT on Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Assocaited Press
LOS ANGELES – Dick Clark, renowned as "America's oldest teenager," has diabetes.
The 74-year-old producer and TV star has had type 2 diabetes – what used to be called adult-onset diabetes – since 1994 but kept it a secret from everyone except close friends and family, according to the public relations firm Ogilvy, which is promoting Clark's new role as a spokesman for the American Association of Diabetes Educators and the pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co.
Clark is working with the firms to launch "Diabetes: Know the Heart Part," a national public education campaign to alert Americans to the little-known link between diabetes and heart attack and stroke.
Clark, the former host of "American Bandstand" and producer of the American Music Awards, refused to speak to The Associated Press on Tuesday after word of his illness was first reported in a gossip column in the New York Daily News. link