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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #63084 Easy Insulin: Banting, Best, and diabetes treatment

Read the following passage.

A. For centuries people knew about diabetes, but it was poorly understood until the end of the 19th century. In 1889 two German researchers, Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering, found that dogs whose pancreas had been removed quickly became severely diabetic, so something in that organ seemed to prevent the disease. At the turn of the 20th century, the only effective treatment was a strict diet, sometimes as low as 500 calories a day, which meant slow starvation. Over the next 30 years hundreds of researchers searched for the missing substance, but their extracts worked poorly and often had harmful side effects.

B. The Toronto work began with an idea. On 31 October 1920, Frederick Banting, a young surgeon in London, Ontario, wrote down a plan for research on the pancreas. John James Rickard Macleod, an expert in carbohydrate metabolism at the University of Toronto, was skeptical but offered Banting lab space, dogs and a student assistant. Charles Best won a coin toss for the job, and the two began their experiments on 17 May 1921. On 30 July they injected an extract into a diabetic dog and saw a sharp drop in its blood sugar. In December Macleod added the biochemist James Collip to the team.

C. In January 1922 the team was ready to treat a person. On 11 January an extract was injected into Leonard Thompson, a 13-year-old boy close to death in Toronto General Hospital, but the test was a failure. Collip then developed a better process that removed toxic contaminants, and when the injections resumed on 23 January, the boy's blood sugar went to normal. That spring the group first used the word "insulin," from a Latin root for islets. In 1923 Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize, and each divided his prize money equally with a partner, Banting with Best and Macleod with Collip.

D. For many years the University of Toronto supervised its production through patents and licensed manufacturers, who by the end of 1923 were supplying patients around the world. The first insulin was extracted from beef and pork pancreas and needed several injections a day, so in the 1930s researchers added protamine and later zinc to make it last longer. In 1978 the first human insulin was made with recombinant DNA, and it was on the market by 1982. Most people now take insulin with a needle and syringe, a pen or a pump, and some use an artificial pancreas, a set of three devices that work together.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
Early insulin came from cows and pigs.

- 2.
The first shot given to a patient did not work.

- 3.
Best got his place in the lab by winning a game of chance.

- 4.
Around 1900, a very limited diet was the one treatment that worked.

- 5.
Leonard Thompson went on to live for many years after his treatment.

- 6.
A test on an animal showed that the extract could reduce sugar in the blood.

- 7.
Some patients today use a group of devices that act like a working pancreas.

- 8.
Human insulin made from the 1980s cost patients less than the older animal insulin.

- 9.
Both Nobel winners gave half of their award money to a team member.

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