Yet when Dr. Bernstein was asked how he felt after being proved to have been right all along, he said his feelings were mixed.

"On one hand, it's nice to get congratulations from old friends and patients," he said. "And after years of being told by the medical establishment that my ideas were crazy or that I was a wacko, it's good to be vindicated. But I knew that would happen if I lived long enough."

But, he added, he sees problems in translating the regimens followed by those in the trial study to the real world.

"Those in the study followed some version of a high-carbohydrate diet and used large doses of insulin," he said, "while our regimen for Type I insulin-dependent diabetes is for a very low-carbohydrate diet and very small doses of insulin because insulin does not work as fast as carbohydrate in affecting blood sugar. And when you get large amounts of both, you get big deviations from a level blood sugar." Trying to Keep Costs Down

Another concern of Dr. Bernstein's about the results of the trial, he said, is that in the trial, "they had four people simultaneously treating each patient, which would be a very expensive procedure." He added: "Self-monitoring should keep the cost down. The best way, in my opinion, is to have a lot of patients coming into one central place where they can be divided into similar groups and seen by a trained paramedical. A doctor would be responsible for the quality control of the entire group. An H.M.O. facility would be an ideal place to render this type of service to diabetics."

Giving volume care and overseeing a staff of paramedics is the only way a doctor running a diabetes center can earn a living, Dr. Bernstein said.

"In my practice, I have trained patients to literally be their own doctors," he said, "so I don't need to see them every month."