Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roark on March 13, 2012 at 2:32pm

Wow. That child went from having a death sentence, to something more along the lines of a major nuisance.

Bravo, Mr. Banting & Mr. Best! :)

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Permalink Reply by Zoe on March 13, 2012 at 2:35pm

Oh my god. I'd heard the stories, and seen a segment on DLife, but that picture is almost unbearable!

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Permalink Reply by Amy on March 13, 2012 at 2:43pm

Thanks Dr. Banting!! BTW he was Canadian!! :)

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Permalink Reply by FHS on March 13, 2012 at 2:57pm

Here's an obituary for Dr Michael Somogyi, another important person that was instrumental in getting insulin to diabetics.

http://archive.samj.org.za/1971%20VOL%20XLV%20Jul-Dec/Articles/10%2...

In 1922, while on the Faculty of Washington University
School of Medicine, in teamwork with Drs P. A. Shaffer and
E. A. Doisy, Dr Somogyi was instrumental in working out the
method for the preparation of insulin. This method is to this
day the one used all over the world for the commercial
production of insulin. The first child diabetic to be treated
with insulin in the USA was an 18-month-old baby boy in
the St Louis Children's Hospital in early October 1922, using
insulin prepared by this trio of researchers.

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Permalink Reply by Richard157 on March 13, 2012 at 3:53pm

Thanks, I did not know about Somogyi's contribution.

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Holko on March 13, 2012 at 4:30pm

What is even more interesting that the University of Toronto and or Banting did not patent insulin. I guess there was some morality in business then.

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Permalink Reply by FHS on March 13, 2012 at 5:38pm

Can you patent a hormone produced by every healthy pancreas in the world?

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Permalink Reply by Type1Gal on March 13, 2012 at 6:33pm

Of course, one can nearly 'patent, trademark, register', anything it seems, of course insulin. OUR HEROES!

Children dying from diabetic ketoacidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death.

In one of medicine's more dramatic moments, Banting, Best, and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families.

The Nobel Prize committee in 1923 credited the practical extraction of insulin to a team at the University of Toronto and awarded the Nobel Prize to two men: Frederick Banting and J.J.R. Macleod.[51] They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923 for the discovery of insulin. Banting, insulted that Best was not mentioned, shared his prize with him, and Macleod immediately shared his with James Collip. The patent for insulin was sold to the University of Toronto for one half-dollar.

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Holko on March 13, 2012 at 7:30pm

http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/GlargineUnitedStatesPaten...

patent on lantus

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Permalink Reply by Dee on March 18, 2012 at 12:16pm

They were not able to patent insulin as it is a naturally occurring hormone, derived from ground up animal pancreases (to be rather crude about the prep method), however they may have been able to patent the method for collection/purification.
The modern insulins, lantus, Levimir, Humalog, Novorapid and Apidra have all the ammino acid sequence changed to change the way in which is acts. As this is a change of the original molecule, it is able to be patented.

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Permalink Reply by Richard157 on March 18, 2012 at 4:10pm

Good points, Dee, thanks!

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Permalink Reply by FHS on March 13, 2012 at 5:44pm

Yeah, we all learn about DP and the Somogyi Effect, but he did a ton of research back in those days.

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