Numerous Kremlin propaganda media – RIA Novosti, the program "Vremya", "Vesti", "Arguments and Facts", "MK" and others – report on the ridiculous mistake of President Biden: he allegedly stated that he had communicated with a man who died before his birth. RIA in the material under the heading "Biden admitted that he" spoke "with the dead" writes :
“U.S. President Joe Biden claimed to have spoken to one of the discoverers of the hormone insulin, even though both of the scientists who did so, Dr. Frederick Banting and Professor John James Richard Macleod, died before he was born.
“Do you know how much it costs to produce insulin for diabetics? It was discovered by a man who specifically filed a patent for it so that the medicine would be available to everyone. I spoke to him…” assured the head of the White House, speaking at a special event in Florida.
Banting and MacLeod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of insulin. They died in 1941 and 1935 respectively. At the same time, Biden was born in 1942.”
Kremlin propagandists repeated the pro-Republican New York Post's claim, apparently without verifying it. And it would be worth checking.
The Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin was indeed awarded in 1923 to Banting and Macleod. But, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Banting was outraged that the prize was awarded to Macleod, who had not participated in the original experiments on the release of insulin from the pancreas of a dog, while surpassing Charles Herbert Best, then a student, who had worked with Banting from the very beginning. Banting agreed to accept the prize, but shared it equally with Best. In the commemorative article "100 Years of Insulin" on the British specialized website diabetes.org.uk, three are named as the discoverers of the hormone – Banting, Best and Macleod. Best died in 1978 and could well have been Biden born in 1942.
Macleod, in turn, shared his share of the Nobel Prize with James Collip. The fact is that the first experience of using insulin for the symptomatic treatment of diabetes in humans was not entirely successful: in a 14-year-old patient, Leonard Thompson, the blood sugar level dropped to almost normal levels, but an abscess developed at the injection site, and the level of ketones remained elevated. Thompson was saved from immediate death, which threatened him before the introduction of insulin, but he remained seriously ill and died 13 years later from pneumonia.
Insulin has become a widely used safe drug, allowing millions of diabetics to lead normal lives, thanks to Collip's purification technology. RIA inaccurately translated Biden's phrase: the president used the verb invented ("invented"), and not discovered ("discovered"). And if Biden did not make a reservation, then perhaps he meant Collip, who died in 1965.
A US patent for insulin and a method for its production was obtained in 1923 by Banting, Best, and Collip. They immediately sold it to the University of Toronto for a nominal $1 each. The famous phrase "insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the whole world" was said by Banting, but it reflects the position of all three scientists.
