Jacqueline

In 1922, a team of scientists visited Toronto General Hospital, where wards housed numerous diabetic children. Many of these children were in a comatose state and on the brink of death due to diabetic ketoacidosis. As a result of the amount of deaths, scientists moved swiftly and proceeded to inject the children with a new purified extract of insulin. As they commenced injecting the final comatose child, the first one to receive the injection started to regain consciousness. Subsequently, one by one, all the children emerged from their diabetic comas. During the early 1920s, Frederick Banting, Charles Best and John Macleod discovered insulin. Both Banting and Macleod were awarded Nobel Prizes in 1923. James Collip played a crucial role in refining insulin, which was instrumental in enabling its effective application in diabetes treatment. Banting declined to have his name included on the patent and opted to sell it to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. He believed it unethical to seek profit from a discovery destined to save countless lives. “Insulin belongs to the world, not to me," he said. In 2019, the average cost was $58 per insulin fill, typically for a 30-day supply.