Posted on 11/14/2016 1:17:23 PM PST by posterchild
Today’s Google Doodle honors the 125th birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, the first person to use insulin to treat people with diabetes. That achievement garnered Banting a share of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Most folks know that insulin is a lifesaving treatment, but fewer know how it works. I wouldn’t be writing about it if chemistry weren’t involved in the story, of course. So let’s dive in.
Insulin is a natural protein that regulates energy consumption and blood sugar levels in the body. When a person develops Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas no longer produces enough insulin. Nowadays treating diabetes is a matter of the right combination of medications and diet. Before insulin was discovered, though, diabetes was essentially a death sentence. That wasn’t that long ago. We’re talking the 1920s, less than 100 years before today.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I haven’t used Google in years. Been using DuckDuckGo. No tracking, no collection of data.
That’s nice. Now go away and leave the thread for people interested in science, medicine, and fantastic breakthroughs by brilliant people who are helping fight diseases that a few decades ago were death sentences for millions.
Go away? No, I think I’ll stick around, thank you very much.
That’s fine. Please try to stay on topic and not toss in totally irrelevant tangential remarks about things like your search engine preferences. Nobody cares.
Thank you for your. cooperation.
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