Game Changers in Medicine
Game Changers in Medicine is a groundbreaking medical history podcast about the serendipitous events, chance encounters, and unlikely heroes and heroines behind some of the world’s most significant medical discoveries. Through oral histories, memoirs, and other first-person accounts, we get to know the scientists whose curiosity, innovation, and dogged determination contributed to game-changing medical discoveries that almost didn’t happen—and which continue to define patient care today.Created by Dramatic Health co-founder Sean Moloney, who serves as executive producer, with host Dr. Rubin Pillay, Professor of Medicine and Business, Assistant Dean for Global Health Innovation, School of Medicine, and Chief Innovation Officer at UAB Health System, University of Alabama at Birmingham. New episodes monthly.
Game Changers in Medicine
Insulin: The lucky coin toss and improbable partnership that led to this life-saving elixir
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Dramatic Health, Inc.
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Season 1
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Episode 7
Currently, more than 460 million people have some form diabetes. However, what was once a life-threatening disease is now a manageable condition thanks to the discovery of insulin.
In today’s episode you’ll meet the young Canadian surgeon, Dr. Frederick Banting, and learn how the three sentences he scribbled in the middle of the night changed the course of medical history: “Diabetes. Ligate pancreatic ducts of dog. Keep dogs alive till acini degenerate leaving islets. Try to isolate the internal secretion of these and relieve glycosuria.”
What do these words mean, exactly, and how was it that Banting and his unlikely team of collaborators managed not only to discover life-saving insulin, but to do it in record time?
Listen to find out.