Brief Biography:
Dr. Fredrick Banting was born in Canada in 1891 and grew up on a rural farm. He got a general arts degree at the University of Toronto and went on to teach at the University of Western Ontario. Banting went into the military in WWI and was awarded a military cross in heroism for his duty served.
Contributions:
Banting was very interested in diabetes and researched the pancreas. He theorized that diabetes was a result of a missing protein. The mysterious protein was names insulin and the challenge was to obtain the protein. Banting attempted to obtain insulin cells from ground up dead pancreas but this was unsuccessful. The challenge was to get the cells from a live pancreas. Banting was able to trick an anima pancreas to produce only insulin and collected what was produced. He has successfully collected insulin for the use of aiding in diabetes.
So What?
This breakthrough as helped countless diabetes victims. Before Banting there was very little known about diabetes but with this discovery diabetes is now a very manageable disease. Insulin synthesis has come a long way from Banting's method making it much cheaper. There has has been innovations using insulin such as implantable insulin pumps which regulates a patients insulin levels without the need for injections.
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