0:00 Before 1922, a diagnosis of Type One diabetes was not a diagnosis.0:05 It was a death sentence.0:07 Mm-hm.0:08 A particularly cruel one.0:10 Children would waste away to skin and bone.0:14 There was no treatment, only a starvation diet that might buy you another year.0:21 Maybe.0:21 And in that world, the idea of a cure felt like pure fantasy.0:26 It reminds me of our penicillin story last week—that forgotten petri dish that changed everything.0:35 But this time, the miracle wasn't found by accident.0:39 It was dragged into existence by sheer, bloody-minded obsession.0:45 And by four men who, by the end, could barely stand to be in the same room.0:52 It all starts with one of them: Frederick Banting.0:56 A struggling surgeon in London, Ontario, not a celebrated researcher.1:02 And late one night in 1920, he wakes up with an idea.1:06 Just twenty-five words he scribbles down that he believes can solve the mystery of diabetes.1:14 But an idea is one thing.1:17 He needs a lab.1:18 He needs resources.1:20 He has none.1:21 So he goes, hat in hand, to the University of Toronto, to a man named John Macleod.1:28 Macleod is Banting’s opposite in every way.1:32 He’s a big deal in metabolism research, established, respected… and deeply skeptical.1:39 He listens to this young, excitable surgeon and, you know, he’s not impressed.1:46 Not at all.1:47 But he agrees, almost dismissively, to give Banting a chance.1:52 He offers him a small, derelict lab for the summer, ten dogs for experiments, and a student assistant, Charles Best.2:02 And then Macleod does something crucial.2:06 He leaves.2:06 He goes on holiday to Scotland for the entire summer, leaving these two novices to it.2:14 And the work they do that summer is… well, it's brutal.2:19 It's hot, the lab is filthy, and their procedure involves surgically tying off the pancreatic ducts of dogs, waiting for the organ to atrophy, then removing it to make an extract.2:34 It’s grim work.2:35 They fail again and again.2:38 But they are completely driven.2:40 And finally, they get a result.2:43 They inject their crude pancreatic extract—their "isletin"—into a diabetic dog, and its blood sugar drops.2:52 It works.2:53 They have it.2:54 Or… they think they have it.2:57 The problem is, their extract is a thick, brown muck.3:01 It’s full of contaminants.3:04 When they try to inject it, it causes sterile abscesses.3:08 It’s too impure for a human.3:11 They’re so close, but they’ve hit a wall.3:14 This is when Macleod returns from his vacation.3:18 And he sees that this wild idea he dismissed is not only viable, it might be one of the biggest breakthroughs of the century.3:29 And he takes over.3:31 Which, you can imagine, did not go over well with Banting.3:36 He saw Macleod as trying to steal his glory.3:40 Macleod, for his part, saw two amateurs who had stumbled onto something they couldn't finish.3:48 And he knew who could.3:50 He brings in a fourth man, James Collip.3:53 Collip is the missing piece.3:56 He’s a brilliant biochemist.3:58 While Banting and Best are fuming, convinced they're being sidelined, Collip locks himself in the lab and, using his expertise, does what they couldn't.4:11 He figures out how to purify the extract.4:15 And just in time.4:16 At Toronto General Hospital, a fourteen-year-old boy named Leonard Thompson is in a diabetic coma.4:25 He weighs sixty-five pounds.4:27 He’s dying.4:28 They have one shot.4:30 First, they inject him with Banting and Best’s original, cruder extract.4:36 Nothing.4:37 His symptoms barely change.4:39 The team is devastated.4:41 But then, a few days later, they try again.4:45 This time, with Collip’s new, purified insulin.4:49 And the effect is… immediate.4:51 It’s biblical.4:53 His blood sugar plummets to near-normal levels.4:57 The boy begins to recover.4:59 He sits up.5:00 He speaks.5:01 He lives.5:02 It’s a complete, undeniable miracle.5:05 But the moment of triumph is also the moment the war for credit begins.5:11 Banting was convinced Macleod had done nothing but lend a lab, and Collip was just a technician.5:19 And the Nobel committee seemed to partly agree.5:23 In 1923, the prize was awarded to Banting and Macleod.5:28 Banting was FURIOUS.5:30 He felt Best, his partner from that first summer, was the one who deserved it.5:37 He almost refused the prize.5:39 Almost.5:40 Instead, he holds a press conference and announces, publicly, that he is giving half of his prize money to Charles Best.5:50 It was a spectacular, very public rebuke of the committee.5:55 And it worked.5:56 The pressure was on.5:58 The very next day, Macleod announced he would be sharing his prize money with James Collip.6:06 So in the end, they all got a piece.6:09 But the partnership was shattered.6:12 They patented insulin for one dollar, giving it to the University of Toronto to ensure it was available to everyone.6:22 A moment of pure grace after years of ego and conflict.6:27 It proves that discovery isn’t always a lone genius under an apple tree.6:33 Sometimes, it’s a brawl in a back alley.6:37 And sometimes, out of that mess, you get a miracle that saves millions of lives.
