Frederick G. Banting
11/14/1891-02/21/1941
Discoverer of Insulin
1923 Winner (with J.J.R. Macleod) of the Nobel Prize for discovery
Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, Dr. Banting. Happy birthday to you! We diabetics are SO VERY GLAD that you were born.
On this World Diabetes Awareness Day, the 120th anniversary of Dr. Banting's birth, I'd like to say a few things in simple appreciation of this man and his work.
Seems like EVERYBODY has diabetes these days. Didn't used to be so. Not for long anyway. Before Dr. Banting's little discovery of insulin, a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis was a death sentence. Let me put it even more bleakly, before 1922, there was a 100% death rate for Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetics. Our bodies, unable toprocess carbohydrates, literally starved to death. Our organs stopped working. A painfully horrific death.
Insulin is so widely available now that it's hard to believe there was a time in our not-too-distant past (before 1922) when insulin injections didn't exist. No one knew anything about this simple hormone (first dubbed 'isletin' for the Islets of Langerhans). We didn't know it existed. For Type 1 diabetics, that was a fatal thing not to know. Not to have. Not to live.
But, in walks our unlikely hero, the plucky and persistent Frederick G. Banting. I don't throw the word 'miracle' around too much. People overuse and abuse it. But, it really is quite miraculous that Dr. Banting discovered insulin.
So, I thank you, Dr. Banting for so many things. Here are just a few.
Thank you, Dr. Banting, for putting your heart and soul into diabetes research, even though you had no prior research experience and had attended only one lecture on diabetes before taking the job in Toronto where you discovered insulin, how to isolate it, how to inject it.
Thank you, Dr. Banting, for turning the incredible loss you suffered, when your close friend withered and died from diabetes, into a driving force in unlocking some of the mysteries of the pancreas.
Thank you, Dr. Banting, for believing in yourself, for not giving up on your theories about a 'pancreatic extract' even though your boss, J. J. R. Macleod--a leading figure in the study of diabetes in Canada, didn't put much stock in your ideas to begin with.
Thank you for your tears when your diabetic research collie, that you'd kept alive on your 'isletin', died 9 days after the meager supply ran out. Thank you for caring so much.
Thank you for selling your car to personally fund your research endeavors when the initial university money ran out. Thank you for putting your all into finding an answer.
Thank you for not being greedy, for never profiting from your discovery so that insulin could be a very low cost miracle drug available to everyone that needed it, not just the rich. You sold your insulin patent for $1 to the University of Toronto to further research. You didn't accept the $1 million dollars (in the 1920s!!) offered to you by a financier. You were an honest, ethical man committed to your ideals.
Thank you, Dr. Banting, for all the parents who don't have to watch their Type 1 kids die like they did before insulin. We still lose more than we should; but, not like we did before you entered our world.
I have to cry when I read the story of your injecting this newly purified insulin into diabetic children in hospital wards in 1922. The kids lay comatose and dying of ketoacidosis. Before the last children were injected, the first began waking up from their comas. I can only imagine how that felt, not just to the kids and their parents; but, to you.
You changed the world. And did it with such humility. I wish I could have known you. You are my hero.
I thank you, Dr. Frederick Grant Banting, for all the birthdays I've celebrated since being diagnosed a Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetic a few months before my sixth birthday in 1969.
Without you, I wouldn't be here. There wouldn't have been a seventh birthday for me. We Type 1s that are alive today have you to thank for every yesterday, today and tomorrow. We mourn those who didn't get the benefit of your work. Who weren't as lucky as we are. Thank you doesn't seem big enough. But, it's simple and straightforward. Thank you for saving our lives. Millions and millions of 'thanks' for the millions and millions you saved.
Anita Whittle Peacock
Lifelong Type 1 Diabetic
This post made possible by Dr. Frederick G. Banting
Cited references:
"Discovery of Insulin" by Christian Nordqvist in 'Medical News Today',
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/diabetes/discoveryofinsu
lin.php
"The Discovery of Insulin". NobelPrize.org.
http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/insulin/discovery-insulin.html
"Frederick Banting", http://scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80&Itemid=115
"Frederick Grant Banting". Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Sir_Frederick_Grant_Banting.aspx
