How a 14-Year-Old Boy Helped Save Millions from Diabetes

Leonard Thompson was fading fast in a Toronto hospital bed, his body wasting away at just 30 kilograms. The 14-year-old had been fighting diabetes for three years, surviving only on a brutal starvation diet that bought him a little more time but no hope of recovery.

Then his parents made a desperate choice. They agreed to let their dying son become the first human test subject for a radical new treatment called insulin.

On January 11, 1922, Thompson received his first injection. The dose caused an allergic reaction, and for a moment, it seemed like another cruel setback for a boy who had already suffered so much.

But scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best refined their process quickly. Twelve days later, Thompson received a second injection, and this time, something remarkable happened.

"The boy became brighter, more active, looked better and said he felt stronger," hospital records documented. Within months, Thompson recovered enough to go home, defying what had seemed like certain death.

Before insulin's discovery, type 1 diabetes killed nearly everyone who developed it, usually within a year of diagnosis. The only treatment was a starvation diet so strict that patients barely clung to life, buying perhaps an extra year at most.

Banting had woken up with the breakthrough idea on October 31, 1920, scribbling his hypothesis in the middle of the night. Working with Best in a University of Toronto laboratory throughout 1921, they successfully isolated insulin from dogs on July 27.

The team knew they had something special, but they needed human proof. Thompson provided that proof.

Why This Inspires

Thompson lived for 13 more years after his first successful treatment, nearly doubling his expected lifespan despite the primitive insulin available at the time. His courage to try an unproven treatment opened the door for millions of others.

The discovery moved so fast that Banting and colleague John Macleod won the Nobel Prize in October 1923, barely a year after Thompson's recovery. The team sold their patents to the University of Toronto for just $1 each, ensuring insulin could be produced without royalties and made widely available.

Today, more than 8 million people worldwide use insulin to manage their diabetes. What was once a devastating death sentence for children like Thompson is now a condition people live with for decades, leading full, active lives.

Modern insulin is far more refined and effective than what saved Thompson's life. People with type 1 diabetes now have insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors, and treatment plans that let them play sports, travel the world, and pursue any dream they choose.

Every injection given today traces back to a scared teenager who chose hope over certainty, and to scientists who refused to accept that young people had to die from a treatable condition.