“Globally every 8 seconds one diabetic patient dies every 4 seconds a new diabetic is diagnosed and every 20 seconds one limb is amputated in a diabetic patient”.
This is the story of a young dynamic inquisitive person whose parents wanted him to be a priest, however he became an orthopaedic surgeon and at the age of 33, received a Nobel prize. Never in the history of the Nobel committee of the Caroline Institute, a scientist was awarded a prize just one year after his/her inventions, yet he was selected because the ‘hormone’ he discovered saved millions and millions of people around the world from the pangs of death. This man, Frederik Grant Banting was born on November 14, 1891 in a small town close to Ontario, Canada and in his memory November 14 is being celebrated as World Diabetes Day since 1991 throughout the world. The hormone he discovered was insulin and each year Rs.750 crores worth of insulin is being used in India, where around 70 million diabetic patientss are living.
As a prelude to priesthood, Banting was sent for studies in divinity, but he was not happy and took up ‘medicine’. Immediately after the ‘Canadian Expeditionary Force’ during the 1st World War and served in France. After the war, he practised in a small town in Ontario, at the same time worked as a part time lecturer in surgery at the University Medical School.
He was very much interested in ‘Diabetes’ because of the premature death of his childhood sweetheart due to diabetes for which no etiology was yet found out. Previous research reports from many countries had already established a relationship between pancreas and diabetes but further researches were stopped because of the World War.
On October 20,1920, Banting happened to read an article about the possible extraction of a substance from pancreas which could bring down the high blood sugar in pancreactomised animals, but scientists could not extract this material successfully.
Since Banting was unhappy with his fledgling practice but wanted to do further research on Diabetes, he approached an internationally famous Scottish Physiology Professor in the University of Toronto, Prof James McLeod, who provided him a dingy dark room, 6 dogs and an assistant, a Biochemistry (Hons) student Charls Herbert Best, who was 7 years junior to Banting. Experiments on dogs started on May 27, 1921 and in December they could establish that the extract derived from pancreas (after ligating the pancreatic duct for a few days) could reduce the blood sugar, but the results were not uniform.
They invited another biochemist JB Collip working in the University of Alberta, Canada to join them. The first outside presentation of their findings was done at New Haven, Connecticut, during the annual meeting of the ‘North American Physiological Society’ on December 30, 1921. But this finding was not universally accepted.
Banting and Best were disappointed but continued their work. The first human being in whom the extract was tested was a 14 year old boy Leonard Thompson who was admitted in a comatose state due to Diabetes in the Toronto General Hospital. The crude pancreatic extract was given by injection on January 11, 1922.
Although the patient developed multiple abscesses at the site of injection, the boy responded very well to the treatment. Thus for the first time, there was unambiguous evidence to prove that the extract they derived from the dog’s pancreas could be used to treat diabetes, and the name insulin was given to this hormone.
After 18 months in 1923, Banting and McLeod received the Nobel prize for medicine and physiology, but Banting was disappointed for not including the name of his assistant, Charles Best, without whom the research would not have been successful. As a token of his appreciation he shared the prize with Charles Best while his Professor shared the prize with Collip.
The same year the Canadian Parliament granted Banting $7500 as life annuity, he was also voted as the fourth great Canadian and knighted by King George V. During World War II he served as the Liaison Officer between the British and North America Medical Service and died on duty in an air crash on February 21, 1941.
Further developmental changes from animal insulin to human insulin, synthetic insulins, DNA Recombinant insulins and various analogues of insulin are well known to the readers.It is only appropriate at this juncture to remember this man, to enhance public awareness about the disease throughout the world where 365 million diabetic patients exist.
Principal Consultant of Emeritus Professor of Medicine, S U T Hospital, Pattom