In healthy subjects made modestly insulin deficient with somatostatin, administration of glucagon in amounts estimated to replace fasting levels cause hyperglycaemia [6,19,41]. As the plasma glucagon levels were actually slightly elevated over basal in these studies, the findings generally recapitulate T2DM with modest reductions of plasma insulin and modestly increased glucagon. In fact, the suppression of islet hormone secretion with somatostatin in T2DM subjects caused a significant reduction of basal HGP, and this effect was magnified when insulin was replaced at basal levels [7]. These findings implicate glucagon in the elevated rates of HGP that characterize T2DM and are consistent with a contribution of glucagon action to the pathogenesis of fasting hyperglycaemia.