Insulin discovery and scientist Frederick Banting

 Insulin discovery and scientist Frederick Banting. Leonardo Thompson, a 14-year-old teenager with type-1 diabetes. Parents had given up hope of survival. At that time, none of the children and adolescents with Type 1 Viobitis survived more than a few months. The time is late 18th century. Scientists have just learned about this special hormone of the pancreas, insulin. Insulin regulates the body’s sugar levels. However, researchers did not know the way to prevent the premature death of children and adolescents in type-1 diabetes. Because this special hormone insulin is repeatedly released from the pancreas. Scientists were failing. Because trypsin, another enzyme in the pancreas, breaks down insulin in moments.

Around 1920, Canadian scientist Frederic Banting discussed how to make this insulin with University of Toronto Physiology Professor JJ Maxey. Research has begun. Macleod allowed Banting to use it in his laboratory. Banting proposed that by tying off the pancreatic ducts, the enzyme trypsin would no longer be able to enter, thereby facilitating the release of insulin from the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans. Macleod also involved his student Charles Best in research with Banting.

They went to the slaughterhouse and started extracting insulin from the pancreas of dogs and calves. Finally, in 1922, they felt it was possible to extract sufficiently purified insulin. Tests were done on dogs. The dogs were saved by injecting insulin extracted from the pancreas. But how can this experiment be done on humans? Who will do it?

This time Leonardo Thompson’s father came forward. He knew his son would die soon. If scientists want to do any experiment on him, do it. 11 January 1922 that day. Leonardo was given the world’s first insulin injection. A severe reaction to the insulin taken from the calf’s pancreas appeared in his body. Leonardo became very sick. Then once his body took it. He was injected again. Now he felt a little better. Surprisingly, Leonardo’s blood sugar was found to be low. He came out of diabetic coma. Leonardo lived another 13 years after he started taking insulin injections.

Banting’s discovery was incredible. After Leonardo, Banting and Best are two friends running from bed to bed of dying children and teenagers in diabetic comas in hospital wards, pushing injections they have made. This scene was often seen. Before reaching the last bed, the unconscious child in the first bed was seen sitting up with his eyes wide open.

Banting and Macleod won the Nobel Prize in 1923. Banting was a little hurt when the award was announced, because Charles Beckett’s name was not on the award. Banting announced that he would share the prize money with Beckett, as he considered Best’s role in the discovery undeniable.

The man whose hands gave the world insulin, the great cure for diabetes, could never be privileged as a doctor. Wanted to join the military early in life, but was rejected due to low vision. After completing his medical studies, he was recruited into the army as there was a need for many doctors on the battlefield. In 1918 he was seriously injured in the famous Cambridge battle. But despite being wounded himself, Banting served other wounded soldiers for 16 hours. After returning from the war, he started working as an orthopedic surgeon. Unable to afford, he moved to London, where he began general practice. Failed there too. He used to lecture in different places along with practicing stomach ablutions, he taught everything from pharmacology to anthropology. It was during this study that his interest in insulin was born.

A striking contrast was Banting’s nature. A doctor and creator of great paintings (he was a member of the Group of Seven artists), he left everything after his breakthrough discovery of insulin to join a secret clinical investigation unit in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Frederick Banting died in a tragic plane crash while doing this work in February 1941. Even at the time of his death, he was busy developing a special type of G-suit for astronauts.

In recognition of Frederick Banting’s research, the Frame of Hope still burns brightly in Sir Frederick Banting Square in Ontario, Canada. This flame will be extinguished the day a cure is discovered that can eradicate diabetes. The whole world is now waiting for that day.