Sir Fredrick G. Banting who led the team that first synthesized insulin in 1921. He said "Insulin belongs to the world" and refused to patent it. Sadly, Banting died in a plane crash at the beginning of WWII.
Frederick Grant Banting was born on November 14, 1891, at Alliston, Ont., Canada. He was the youngest of five children of William Thompson Banting and Margaret Grant. Educated at the Public and High Schools at Alliston, he later went to the University of Toronto to study divinity, but soon transferred to the study of medicine. In 1916 he took his M.B. degree and at once joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and served, during the First World War, in France. In 1918 he was wounded at the battle of Cambrai and in 1919 he was awarded the Military Cross for heroism under fire.
When the war ended in 1919, Banting returned to Canada and was for a short time a medical practitioner at London, Ontario. He studied orthopaedic medicine and was, during the year 1919-1920, Resident Surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. From 1920 until 1921 he did part-time teaching in orthopaedics at the University of Western Ontario at London, Canada, besides his general practice, and from 1921 until 1922 he was Lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Toronto. In 1922 he was awarded his M.D. degree, together with a gold medal.
Earlier, however, Banting had become deeply interested in diabetes. The work of Naunyn, Minkowski, Opie, Schafer, and others had indicated that diabetes was caused by lack of a protein hormone secreted by the islands of Langerhans in the pancreas. To this hormone Schafer had given the name insulin, and it was supposed that insulin controls the metabolism of sugar, so that lack of it results in the accumulation of sugar in the blood and the excretion of the excess of sugar in the urine. Attempts to supply the missing insulin by feeding patients with fresh pancreas, or extracts of it, had failed, presumably because the protein insulin in these had been destroyed by the proteolytic enzyme of the pancreas. The problem, therefore, was how to extract insulin from the pancreas before it had been thus destroyed.
While he was considering this problem, Banting read in a medical journal an article by Moses Baron, which pointed out that, when the pancreatic duct was experimentally closed by ligatures, the cells of the pancreas which secrete trypsin degenerate, but that the islands of Langerhans remain intact. This suggested to Banting the idea that ligation of the pancreatic duct would, by destroying the cells which secrete trypsin, avoid the destruction of the insulin, so that, after sufficient time had been allowed for the degeneration of the trypsin-secreting cells, insulin might be extracted from the intact islands of Langerhans.
Determined to investigate this possibility, Banting discussed it with various people, among whom was J.J.R. Macleod, Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto, and Macleod gave him facilities for experimental work upon it. Dr. Charles Best, then a medical student, was appointed as Banting's assistant, and together, Banting and Best started the work which was to lead to the discovery of insulin.
In 1922 Banting had been appointed Senior Demonstrator in Medicine at the University of Toronto, and in 1923 he was elected to the Banting and Best Chair of Medical Research, which had been endowed by the Legislature of the Province of Ontario. He was also appointed Honorary Consulting Physician to the Toronto General Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, and the Toronto Western Hospital. In the Banting and Best Institute, Banting dealt with the problems of silicosis, cancer, the mechanism of drowning and how to counteract it. During the Second World War he became greatly interested in problems connected with flying (such as blackout).
In addition to his medical degree, Banting also obtained, in 1923, the LL.D. degree (Queens) and the http://D.Sc. degree (Toronto). Prior to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1923, which he shared with Macleod, he received the Reeve Prize of the University of Toronto (1922). In 1923, the Canadian Parliament granted him a Life Annuity of $7,500. In 1928 Banting gave the Cameron Lecture in Edinburgh. He was appointed member of numerous medical academies and societies in his country and abroad, including the British and American Physiological Societies, and the American Pharmacological Society. He was knighted in 1934.
As a keen painter, Banting once took part of a painting expedition above the Arctic Circle, sponsored by the Government.
Banting married Marion Robertson in 1924; they had one child, William (b. 1928). This marriage ended in a divorce in 1932, and in 1937 Banting married Henrietta Ball.
When the Second World War broke out, he served as a liaison officer between the British and North American medical services and, while thus engaged, he was, in February 1941, killed in an air disaster in Newfoundland.
Well, let me commormorate an Iranian diplomat in Paris during occupation. Not only he used Nazi racial pseudoscience in favor of Iranian Jewish population in occupied Europe ( They were surprisingly many) by standing face to face to SS and Gestapo, he used his influence to give many European Jews false Iranian passports to put them under asylum and protection. Schindler might have ended up being a good hearted person but his motivations were selfish at best. This person unlike Schindler not only did not make a Penny out of people's misery, but he dies in a rented apartment in London in absolute poverty. Somehow however the world ain't interested in hearing his story.
Henry George, was an American author, economist, and politician, who wrote an economic treatise entitled "Progress and poverty" in 1879, that offered the only alternative economic model, to the current model in which you are a dependent, a slave, to a monopolist of Land and/or Natural Resources to obtain your employment, and thereby satisfy your survival needs for water, food, clothing, shelter, fuel and medicine.
The reason you haven't heard of Henry George, is that his model favours the economic liberation of the entire population from the financial control of the Plutocrats and ruling elite, as I will attempt to summarise below.
Also, he was deliberate written out of history, and people who supported him even being excommunicated from the Roman Catholic faith, and modern economics teaching revised, to obfuscate his position.
History of the current economic model
Without access to Land and natural resources, you would not be able to survive on this planet for very long.
There was a time when no one owned land. We were all hunter-gatherers who moved around on land, and lived off the animals we could kill.
Then thugs (kings) with armies came and stole the land and natural resources from under us, and killed or enslaved the population.
Since slaves are not terribly productive because they have no incentive to be, and have to be micro-managed to extract work, those kings came up with a new idea where they deluded us into thinking we were "free" and rented the land to us, for a portion of our labour (produce or money).
Then they taxed us another portion of our labour (produce or money) to build infrastructure, which they said we needed, but it was in fact so the king could take the produce he received as tax, and transport it to markets for his own enrichment.
Then the king put up toll gates, and taxed us more labour (money), this time because he said we were damaging "his infrastructure".
Then the king sold us goods in the market, and taxed us for purchasing the
product.
Finally, kings taxed us to continually subsidize infrastructure projects that had no direct benefit for ourselves, but that added value to to the kings land.
And when we finally had no labour (money) left, the king loaned us money in exchange for paying it back with interest, with labour we would only be able to exercise at a future date, or with our children's labour, or our grand-children's labour, etc.
Shift from Aristocracy to Plutocracy
Since fiat money was invented (last 400-years) the ownership has shifted slightly from a traditional "king and aristocracy" to include some new monied players, so we call them collectively, Plutocracy now.
Land leases (rental) evolved into land purchase, which is the same thing, but with no expiry date on the term of the lease. "Owners of land" are still tenants with limited land usage rights who continue to pay ongoing property taxes.
If you don't own sufficient land to ensure your independent survival, then under the current system you are at best a slave who exchanges your labour for money, or you are unemployed when no land/resource owner gives you a place to labour (work), or when you become homeless, you are an alien who is trespassing on land owned by someone else.
The Henry George Model
The Georgist model of LVT (Land Value Tax), is an economic mechanism, to give everyone a theoretical equal economic share of access to Land, while continuing to allow only the most productive business people to access land, and use it for it's most productive use, in a modern complex world economy.
It's a truly free market system in which every citizens basic survival needs are taken care of from birth to death, but not through taxes on others people labour, profits, or innovations.
If you don't work you won't get wealthy but, if you do want to work, you are not dependent on someone else for your employment. It's your choice to work for them, or work for yourself, or not work at all, and it puts the negotiating power for your remuneration back in your hands.
It also takes away unnecessary legislation to police employers, and they can hire and fire to obtain only the most productive workers.
Because land must be productive, people who currently monopolise it for the sake of simply creating a false shortage, are forced to either use it, or loose it back to the system, so others can create employment.
For new start-up companies, the barriers to entry are lowered. Because land is rented rather than bought, so all capital can be directed into the project itself rather than into purchasing artificially expensive land.
The value of capital investments in infrastructure add to the asset value of the land, but since everyone has an equal economic share in land, your land rental (tax) works for you directly. Currently, your taxes pass from your pocket into that of the land monopolist where the investment is made.
For hard working productive people, you don't have to support the lazy or feel guilty about their lack of economic wealth, because only they stop themselves from working.
Most importantly, you own a share in your country, so for the first time you are genuinely a citizen with equal economic rights, and not an alien on someone else's land looking for employment from "the landlord".
The greatest people who history has forgotten and will do, is these children!
These innocent children who should work throughout the whole days and go to sleep in a wrecked house and household, to gain some money for their drug dealer and addicted parents.
They are great just because they share happiness and joy in our streets playing beautiful songs, selling flowers to us, washing our cars, etc. They make us happy and conceal their miseries!
The history is beholden to lots of people who gave their life for others happiness and never have a throne!
