Som Frederick Banting Essay

In 1920 one of the biggest life saving inventions was created. Out of the University of Toronto Dr. Fredrick Banting and Charles Best were able to create a pancreatic extract that was successfully tested on a dog. Prof. J. J. R. MacLeod who provided the lad and the scientific direction to Best & Banting soon put his entire research team to work on purifying insulin. The first test was done on a man named Leonard Thompson in early 1922. It was a great success. The discovery of insulin, although not a cure, saves millions of diabetics a year and was the biggest medical invention of the 1920’s. (Discovery Of Insulin)

Diabetes, Diabetes Mellitus, is a chronic illness this means that it has no cure and the symptoms persist over a long period of time. This illness is a result of an imbalance of hormones, insulin, produced in the pancreas. Insulin plays an important role in how the body uses food. Insulin enables the cells in the bloodstream to absorb and use glucose for fuel. If the pancreas produces too little or no insulin or if the insulin doesn’t work properly the person may become diabetic. Therefore, diabetics are not able to properly convert food into fuels needed by the body to function, which can seriously lead to physical consequences.

Insulin for diabetes was discovered in 1921 at the University of Toronto by Sir Frederick G. Banting, Charles H. Best, and JJR Macleod. James B. Collip subsequently purified it, and one year later on January 11, it was put to use on a young 14 year old boy named Leonard Thompson; a patient at Toronto General Hospital. Once the substance was delivered, it was found that the extract was so pure that he suffered an allergic reaction, and further injections were cancelled. James Collip worked for the next 12 days on improving the ox-pancreas extract, and the second dose given to Thompson on January 23 was completely successful. Prior to this, a type 1 diabetic would be put on a starvation diet, or be limited to a calorie intake of around 450 calories per day, and would only live a few extra months. Leonard Thompson lived another 14 years, until 1935 when he died of pneumonia at the age of 28.

First and foremost, Dr. Frederick Banting was able to isolate insulin and use it to treat the metabolic disorder diabetes which has benefited Canada. As a result, numerous individuals have been able to receive treatment which has reduced the number of deaths. This decrease in mortalities has also lowered the number of debilitating conditions resulting from diabetes. In fact, the mortality rate for diabetes over the past forty-five years has dropped by over fifty percent (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). This decrease clearly indicates that the death rates for diabetes is gradually declining. This trend can be followed from the time insulin was discovered and has increased the prognosis and quality of life for many people. In addition, the number of diabetes cases in Canada has risen by almost thirty percent over the past twenty years (Public Health Agency of Canada 2). Although, the number of people living with diabetes is significantly

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French classical economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years before and after the Revolution of February 1848. This was the period when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism. As a Deputy to the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Bastiat was studying and explaining each socialist fallacy as it appeared. And he explained how socialism must inevitably degenerate into communism. But most of his countrymen chose to ignore his logic. The fight against socialism drained Bastiat's already fading energy, and by 1850--a mere six years alter his first published article and only two since his election to the National Assembly--he was on his deathbed. But far from being a flash in

During the height of racial oppression in America, there was a false notion that one’s pigment of skin was equated with intelligence and overall competency. This ideology shaped political institutions, social class, education, and opportunities in society. In order to disprove such an idea, black elites had to jump through hoops and over barrells to compete with whites. Benjamin Banneker is a prime example of an African-American figure who refuted such claims through his phenomenal works and discoveries. Banneker even stated himself: “The colour of the skin is in no way connected with strength of the mind or intellectual powers.”

In 1921, scientist, Frederick Banting, and his lab assistant, Charles Best, found insulin in the pancreatic extracts of dogs. They injected the insulin into a dog and discovered that it lowered high blood sugar levels back to normal. With the aid of James Collip and J.J.R. Macleod, the scientists developed insulin for human treatment. In 1922, Leonard Thompson, a fourteen-year-old boy dying of diabetes, was injected with the first human dose of insulin, saving his life

The pancreas is located between the stomach and small intestine, and secretes insulin and glucagon to balance blood sugar levels in the body. When the pancreas does not work properly, a person may be diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, which is more commonly known simply as Diabetes (Morris and Maisto, 2002). People with diabetes suffer from extreme thirst, fatigue, lack of or increased appetite, and a myriad of other symptoms if their condition is not controlled properly with diet, exercise, and medications (if needed) (Steadman’s Concise Medical Dictionary, 2001).

Diabetes is a disease that affects the body’s ability to produce or use insulin. It is a precursor to numerous other diseases, which can quickly deteriorate patient’s health if

Insulin resistance is the first physiological change occurring in type two diabetes. In these type two diabetic patients, insulin is unable to move glucose into liver, kidney and muscle cells although insulin is able to attach properly to the cell surface receptors. In order to rectify this, most patients with type two diabetes start secreting normal to very high levels of insulin, which can initially overcome this resistance. After a while, the pancreas cannot keep up with this high insulin production and the cells become resistant to glucose intake. Persistent hyperglycemia or high blood glucose levels are not desirable since this causes damage to the beta cells of the pancreas that produces the insulin hormone. This damage to beta cells further hampers insulin synthesis and patients at this stage are categorized as full-blown diabetic. Such patients consistently show a hyperglycemia state even after hours of fasting ( Hinkle & Cheever,

After reading the first half of chapter two, The Analytic Project, I was most interested in the section titled, The Discovery of Insulin. I furthered my research of this area after reading and was able to better understand insulin and why it was such an important discovery. With that being said, diabetes was the result of malfunctions of the pancreas. Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was a disease that usually caused death, especially during the late nineteenth century. Many feared this disease, and according to A Philosophy of Science, A new Introduction, most people lost their life within a year of being diagnosed with the disease, even with the best treatment available at the time.

Diabetes Mellitus is not a new disease. It was first recognized in ancient Egypt around 1500 B.C.E. It was considered a rare condition in comparison to present times. In 1812, diabetes was acknowledged as a clinical disorder. However, its prevalence at the time was not well documented. During those time periods, diabetes was considered fatal (Polonsky, 2014). The most significant progress came with the discovery of insulin. In 1921, Frederick G. Banting, MD and then student assistant, Charles H. Best, made the discovery of insulin. This discovery led Dr. Banting to being

regulate glucose levels had artificially been altered (“The Discovery of Insulin”). The results were groundbreaking and the diabetic dogs responded well to the injections, marking a major step forward in diabetes research (“The Discovery of Insulin”). Through the help of Professor John Macleod of the University of Toronto, they were able to continue their research (“The Discovery of Insulin”). Finally, in January of 1922, testing Dr. Banting’s developments in diabetes treatment on human beings had finally been completed and the results led to the ultimate development of the insulin treatment that is still used to this day (Simoni, Hill and Vaughan 31).

Subsequently, in the middle of May in 1921, he met Charles Herbert Best, who seemed to be the complete opposite of Fredrick Banting. Bankston says in chapters six and seven, how these two men constantly worked in the lab together; they did many pancreatectomies on different types of dogs. On page sixty-two, Bliss says that they started to experiment on many diabetic dogs. An experiment consisted of surgically ligating the pancreas and stopping nourishment flow to the pancreas. Therefore, the pancreas would degenerate. The pieces of the pancreas were then put into a water and salt substance and frozen. These were then filtered and ground up, which created a substance called isletin. Furthermore, they would take the isletin and inject it into a diabetic dog. After this, the dog seemed to be much stronger and healthier, and its blood sugar dropped.

In 1941, 20 years after the discovery, Banting was in a terrible plane crash during World War 2. His colleagues, J.J.R. Macleod, Charles Best and James Collip all remembered their partner as someone who “was determined, willful, and frequently difficult.” To others like Zulzer, he was “a disappointed and disillusioned man, . . . an unsociable creature… Not a great scientist, as scientifically trained people appreciate the word, he was primarily… a symbol of medical research”. This passage is important because one sees two sides of Banting and who he was as a scientist. One that was against Banting and his scientific discovery and the other supported him. It is also important to note that even after Banting’s death, he was still criticized for his discovery and that he was not the true person who discovered insulin. People considered him just a symbol of medical research and not one who actually discovered something that impacted many people all over the world in