Breakthrough: Banting, Best, And The Race To Save Millions Of Diabetics - Hardcover

Cooper, Thea; Ainsberg, Arthur

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067006470X ISBN 13: 9780670064700

Publisher: Viking, 2010

Synopsis

It is 1919, and Elizabeth Hughes, the 11-year-old daughter of America's most distinguished jurist and politician, Charles Evans Hughes, has been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. It is essentially a death sentence. The only accepted form of treatment—starvation—whittles her down to 45 pounds of skin and bones. Miles away, Canadian researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best manage to identify and purify insulin from animal pancreases—a miracle soon marred by scientific jealousy, intense business competition, and fist fights. In a race against time and a ravaging disease, Elizabeth becomes one of the first diabetics to receive insulin injections—all while its discoverers and a little-known pharmaceutical company struggle to make it available to the rest of the world.

Relive the heartwarming true story of the discovery of insulin as it has never before been told, written with authentic detail and suspense, and featuring walk-ons by William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Eli Lilly, among many others.

About this title

About the Author:

Thea Cooper is a writer, editor, and teacher. She wrote her first poem in second grade and never looked back. She has a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Review:

"A captivating account of the people and passions that transformed the course of an illness, and opened a new world for diabetics" - Vincent Lam, author of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 067006470X
• ISBN 13: 9780670064700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320