Canadian-born British subject, Sir Frederick Grant Banting was a skilled medical researcher who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine
for his role in the discovery of insulin (he was knighted in 1934).
He was killed en route to England on a medical war mission. Banting was a liaison between American and British
medical services with the coming of war.
He was flying from Gander, Newfoundland, to England on when both engines
failed on his plane, which crashed into a stand of trees. Of the four persons on the aircraft, three
died, including Banting who lingered for a few days before succumbing to his
injuries.
Canadian
physician Frederick Banting was definitely his own man – a aspiring surgeon, He
spent his career somewhat frustrated because his codiscovery of insulin at the
tender age of 30 consigned him to a conspicuous life of research. King George V
of Great Britain dubbed him “Sir Frederick.” The Nobel Foundation conferred him
with the highest honor in medical research.
Time Magazine called him
“Spark-Plug Man” for his mercurial temperament and glib humor. The man who extended life for diabetics
responded to an hour to give a two-hour lecture on diabetes, “Hell, for all I
know about diabetes 15 minutes would be enough."
The
isolation of insulin is a story that reads like a minor soap opera. In 1920, Banting, who was a medical
researcher at University of Toronto was doing experimental research on lab
dogs. The basic experimental process?
“Tie off pancreatic duct of dogs. Wait six to eight weeks. Remove residue and
extract.” Together with a research assistant, med student Charles Best, they
isolated insulin, the hormone secreted by the pancreas that controls sugar in
the system.
The
discovery was made possible in part because of the cooperation of department
head John James Rickard MacLeod, a carbohydrate metabolism expert, who
supported the research and provided lab space.
Banting was working without long-term funding over the summer of 1921,
using experimental procedures to produce diabetes in experimental dogs that he
and Best purchased off the streets of Toronto.
As is
often the practice in public health and medical research, a resource-providing
sponsor gets co-credit for a discovery, even if they conduct none of the basic
research. MacLeod and Banting shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for medicine, even
though Banting and Best had performed the basic research – Best was not
credited. There was also at least one
fist fight along the way, between Banting and a biochemist, James Bertram
Collip of the University of Alberta.
Collip was brought into the project to refine the glandular-extraction
technique, and in the fall of 1921 (working in separate labs from the now
fully-funded Banting) he had refined the technique to extract sucfficient
insulin for clinical trials. When the
medical community started to refer to the potential drug as “Collip’s Extract,”
Banting tracked down Dr. Collip on campus, and landed on him, pummeling him and
slamming Collip’s head into the floor, yelling “So, you will call this
'Collip's extract,' will you!”
Laying
aside the theatrics, the next January a 14-year-old diabetic, Leonard Thompson, received the
first human insulin injection. He was
about to slip into a diabetic coma and die.
Instead he lived until 1933. The Nobel committee awarded Banting and
MacLeod with the Nobel. Banting, feeling
that Dr. Best had been slighted, divided his prize money with Best; MacLeod
gave half his prize to Collip. The
research team was left emotionally divided by temper and ego by the end of the
project. MacLeod returned to Scotland in
1928, while Banting became Chair of Medical Research at University of
Toronto. Best would later become chair
of the department.
Banting was a veteran of World War I, wounded in action
and nearly losing his arm. With the
outbreak of the second war, he again sought to serve, this time promoting an
aviation research laboratory. At the
time of his death, Time reported that it was rumored Banting had been working
on a way to prevent blackouts of pilots pulling out of steep dives. On February 21, Dr. Banting was traveling to
England on a research-related mission when his aircraft crashed near a small
Newfoundland lake. Banting survived the
initial crash. He bandaged the injuries
of the of the only other survivor, Captain Joseph Mackey, then rested on a bed
of branches and awaited help for his own severe injuries. The crash was discovered by Newfoundland
trappers who joined the search.
