Alberto de Leiva-Hidalgo, Alejandra de Leiva-Pérez
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Aims
To analyze the main contributions to the discovery of the antidiabetic hormone in the period between 1889, the year in which Oskar Minkowski demonstrated that complete pancreatectomy in dogs caused diabetes, and the year 1923, the date in which the clinical use of insulin was consolidated. A main objective has been to review the controversies that followed the Nobel Prize and to outline the role of the priority rule in Science.
Methods
We have considered the priority rule defined by Robert Merton in 1957, which takes into account the date of acceptance of the report of a discovery in an accredited scientific journal and/or the granting of a patent, complemented by the criteria set out by Ronald Vale and Anthony Hyman (2016) regarding the transfer of information to the scientific community and its validation by it. The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in October 1923 has represented a frame of reference. The claims and disputes regarding the prioritization of the contributions of the main researchers in the organotherapy of diabetes have been analyzed through the study of their scientific production and the debate generated in academic institutions.
Main results and conclusions
(1) According to the criteria of Merton, Vale and Hyman, the priority of the discovery of the antidiabetic hormone corresponds to the investigations developed in Europe by E. Gley (1900), GL Zülzer (1908) and NC Paulescu (1920). (2) The active principle of the pancreatic extracts developed by Zülzer (acomatol), Paulescu (pancreina) and Banting and Best (insulin) was the same. (3) JB Collip succeeded in isolating the active ingredient from the pancreatic extract in January 1922, eliminating impurities to the point of enabling its use in the clinic. (4) In 1972, the Nobel Foundation modified the purpose of the 1923 Physiology or Medicine award to Banting and Macleod by introducing a new wording: "the credit for having produced the pancreatic hormone in a practical available form" (instead of “for the discovery of insulin”).
期刊介绍:
Acta Diabetologica is a journal that publishes reports of experimental and clinical research on diabetes mellitus and related metabolic diseases. Original contributions on biochemical, physiological, pathophysiological and clinical aspects of research on diabetes and metabolic diseases are welcome. Reports are published in the form of original articles, short communications and letters to the editor. Invited reviews and editorials are also published. A Methodology forum, which publishes contributions on methodological aspects of diabetes in vivo and in vitro, is also available. The Editor-in-chief will be pleased to consider articles describing new techniques (e.g., new transplantation methods, metabolic models), of innovative importance in the field of diabetes/metabolism. Finally, workshop reports are also welcome in Acta Diabetologica.