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  • Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best  are credited with discovering insulin  

  • that has saved the lives of millions  of people who suffer from diabetes.

  • Yet Best could have been a forgotten  footnote in the medical history books

  • if it weren't for a coin toss.

  • It all goes back to 1921 when Bantingwho was born in rural Ontario,  

  • Canada had returned from the war as a decorated  veteran and embarked on a career in medicine.

  • He had become deeply interested  in diabetes - a disease that had  

  • plagued humanity for thousands of  years and inevitably led to death.

  • Diabetes results from too much sugar in the  

  • blood - which is why it's important for  diabetics to limit junk food and carbs.

  • In 1921, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson  of Toronto was at death's door.  

  • He weighed just 65 pounds and was drifting  in and out of consciousness in hospital.  

  • Little did he know that he would  soon be in the history books.

  • Scientists suspected diabetes was caused  by a lack of insulin, a hormone formed in  

  • the pancreas that helps the body turn blood sugar  into energy. But they couldn't prove their theory.

  • While working as a physician and surgeonBanting was also teaching part-time at  

  • the University of Western Ontario in  London, two hours' drive from Toronto.

  • While preparing a lecture on the  pancreas, he had a eureka moment  

  • one night, rising from his bed at 2am to jot down  a 25-word hypothesis on how to treat diabetes.

  • He suspected that an enzyme formed in  the pancreas broke down the insulin.

  • So he set out to destroy the enzymes while  preserving the cells that produced insulin.

  • But first, he had to test his hypothesis  on lab animalsin this case

  • dogs - by extracting insulin from  healthy dogs and injecting it into  

  • dogs with diabetes, convinced that it  would control if not cure the disease.

  • So, he visited John James Rickard Macleod - a  professor of physiology at the University of  

  • Toronto and an international expert in diabetes  and asked if he could use his laboratory.

  • Macleod was skeptical but agreed the idea  was worth testing. He gave Banting lab space,  

  • 10 dogs, and insisted that he  also have a research assistant  

  • because Banting didn't have any  research experience himself.

  • This is where the crucial  coin toss came into play.

  • Banting had a choice between two assistants: Charles Best and Clark Noble. Both recently  

  • completed their undergraduate degrees from the  U of T's physiology and biochemistry program.  

  • Both knew full well that finding a cure for  diabetes would make headlines around the world.  

  • Noble already had a distinguished  research background. He had worked  

  • on important early studies helping  to characterize the action of insulin  

  • and he co-authored many of the  original papers describing insulin.  

  • For Best, the rush to help diabetics was  personal. His aunt had died of the disease  

  • which had a profound effect on him. Banting needed only one assistant for  

  • what was supposed to be a two-month project. They decided to flip a coin to see who would  

  • join Banting for the first month and  who would assist him for the second.

  • Best won that coin toss.

  • However, instead of switching assistants  halfway, Banting was apparently so impressed  

  • with Best's work that he decided to keep  the young protégé on for the entire project.

  • Noble later wrote a letter explaining that  “Best had become proficient in assisting  

  • Dr. Banting in his surgical techniques  so it was mutually agreed, in the best  

  • interest of the experiments, that Best should  continue to work out the full time with him.”

  • Banting and Best began working in May 1921. Banting was 29 years old

  • Best was 22 and had not  yet entered medical school.

  • Banting was supposed to do the surgeries  while Best was to measure blood and sugar  

  • levels but both actually became  adept at the others' specialty.

  • They recorded their experiments in a series of  notebooks that documented their difficulties.

  • Many of the dogs died of infections in the  summer heat. But that didn't deter the two men.  

  • Their persistence paid off. At the  end of July, they managed to reduce  

  • blood sugar levels in one diabetic dog. And  then they tested it successfully on others.

  • It hadn't yet been tried on humans but  they were determined to save the life of  

  • 14-year-old Leonard Thompson whom I mentioned  earlier so they prematurely injected him with  

  • impure pancreatic extracts from those dogs  with the permission of the boy's father.  

  • Unfortunately, Thompson suffered  a severe allergic reaction.  

  • Another researcher, the biochemist Dr. James  Collip, was added to the team and managed to  

  • prepare a purer form of insulin that reduced the  boy's blood sugar levels and saved his life.  

  • News of his recovery spread, leading  families to write letters to the scientists 

  • asking for urgent treatment.  

  • Insulin clinics were established  at various hospitals in the city.

  • A University of Toronto surgeon who witnessed  the early trials described how patients in  

  • comas injected with insulin “...awakened  dramatically, snatched from death's door.”  

  • And in the case of this young girllooked unrecognizable four months later.  

  • Banting, Best, and Collip sold the patent for  insulin to the University of Toronto for just  

  • $1. They didn't want to profit from a discovery  that could save lives and wanted everyone who  

  • needed insulin to be able to afford it. The University then entered into an  

  • agreement with an American pharmaceutical  company to begin large-scale production.

  • Within two years, insulin was widely  available to diabetics around the world,  

  • saving the lives of millions of people.

  • We'll never know whether the discovery  of insulin would have taken a different  

  • path had Best lost that coin toss. Despite his role in one of the greatest  

  • discoveries of the 20th centuryhe didn't exactly get the credit.

  • Best was left out when the Nobel prize  for Physiology or Medicine in 1923 

  • went to Banting and McLeod - the lab  director who had spent the summer of 1921  

  • vacationing in Scotland while  his assistants worked away.

  • The Nobel prize to Macleod was so surprising  and controversial that Banting threatened to  

  • reject the award. He later reconsidered and gave  Best half his prize money while Macleod gave  

  • his half to Collipthe researcher who purified  insulin and saved the life of that 14-year-old boy

  • who, by the way, lived another 13 yearsHe died of pneumonia at the age of 27,  

  • thought to be a complication of his diabetes.

  • The original manufactured insulin came from pigs  and cows and its impurities still resulted in  

  • complications over time, so people with  diabetes still lived shortened lives.

  • Since 1982, synthetic "human" insulin has  been manufactured - artificially made from  

  • gene-splicing techniques. Its purity  has increased to 99 per cent and today,  

  • insulin-dependent diabetics who  take care of themselves by eating  

  • healthy food and exercising can  enjoy a near-normal lifespan.

  • Living a healthy lifestyle is more important  than ever, especially as people work from home.  

  • I used to spend hours a day editing  these videos sitting down, which was  

  • really hard on my back and  negatively affected my posture

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  • For Newsthink, I'm Cindy Pom.

Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best  are credited with discovering insulin  

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