Insulin: Turning a Fatal Disease Into a Treatable One

Before the 1920s, type 1 diabetes was usually fatal, and the main treatment was a near-starvation diet. In 1921 at the University of Toronto, Frederick Banting and his student assistant Charles Best, working in the laboratory of John Macleod, extracted insulin from the pancreases of dogs. The biochemist James Collip helped purify it. In January 1922 a 14-year-old boy, Leonard Thompson, became the first person to receive insulin injections, and he improved dramatically.

Banting and Macleod won the 1923 Nobel Prize, and both shared their prize money with colleagues they felt deserved credit. The discoverers sold the patent to the University of Toronto for a token sum, hoping to keep insulin affordable, and drug companies began mass production. The story shows both the value of collaboration and the recurring tension between rewarding innovation and ensuring that life-saving medicines reach those who need them.