Insulin: The Crooked Timber
A History from Thick Brown Muck to Wall Street Gold
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Narrated by:
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Mike Cooper
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By:
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Kersten T. Hall
About this listen
Before the discovery of insulin, a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence. One hundred years after a milestone medical discovery, Insulin: The Crooked Timber tells the story of how insulin was transformed from what one clinician called "thick brown muck" into the very first drug to be produced using genetic engineering, one which would earn the founders of the US biotech company Genentech a small fortune.
Yet when Canadian doctor Frederick Banting was told in 1923 that he had won the Nobel Prize for this life-saving discovery, he was furious. For the prize had not been awarded to him alone—but jointly with a man whom he felt had no right to this honor.
Taking the listener on a fascinating journey, starting with the discovery of insulin in the 1920s through to the present day, Insulin: The Crooked Timber reveals a story of monstrous egos, toxic career rivalries, and a few unsung heroes such as two little-known scientists whose work on wool fibers, carried out in a fume-filled former stable, not only proved to be crucial in unravelling the puzzle of insulin but ushered in a revolution in biology.
©2022 Kersten T. Hall (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.
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Excellent science tale
- By Neuron on 01-19-15
By: Svante Pääbo
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Headstrong
- 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World
- By: Rachel Swaby
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 2013, the New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill. It began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children.” It wasn’t until the second paragraph that readers discovered why the Times had devoted several hundred words to her life: Brill was a brilliant rocket scientist who invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites in orbit, and had recently been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
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Role models for young women
- By mtsuda90 on 06-25-16
By: Rachel Swaby
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The Demon Under The Microscope
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.
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Great Book!!!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-08
By: Thomas Hager
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Denialism
- How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
- By: Michael Specter
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter has twice won the Global Health Council’s Excellence in Media Award, as well as the Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In Denialism, he fervently argues that people are turning away from new technologies and engaging in a kind of magical thinking that is hindering scientific progress.
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A compelling read
- By S on 05-17-11
By: Michael Specter
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Happy Accidents
- Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the Twentieth Century
- By: Morton A. Meyers
- Narrated by: Richard Waterhouse
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Happy Accidents is a fascinating, entertaining, and highly accessible look at the surprising role serendipity has played in some of the most important medical discoveries in the 20th century. What do penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra have in common? They were each discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in the search for something else. In discussing medical breakthroughs, Dr. Morton Meyers makes a cogent, highly engaging argument for a more creative, rather than purely linear, approach to science. And it may just save our lives!
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Don't waste your money!
- By Amazon Customer on 03-20-16
By: Morton A. Meyers
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The Panic Virus
- A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear
- By: Seth Mnookin
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Panic Virus is a gripping scientific detective story about how grassroots radicals, snake-oil salesmen, and cynical journalists have perpetrated the biggest health-scare hoax of all time. It explores what happens when the media treats all viewpoints as equally valid, regardless of facts, from parents who are convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism to right-wing radicals who believe that climate change is a myth
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Incredible thorough journey
- By Rachel Dewald on 03-22-11
By: Seth Mnookin
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The Secret History of the War on Cancer
- By: Devra Davis Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, a legacy that persists to this day.
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Silly Book
- By Adam Smith on 12-24-14
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Robert Oppenheimer
- A Life Inside the Center
- By: Ray Monk
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 35 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Oppenheimer was among the most brilliant and divisive of men. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis in the race to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough that was to have eternal ramifications for mankind and that made Oppenheimer the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” But with his actions leading up to that great achievement, he also set himself on a dangerous collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch-hunters. In Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, Ray Monk, author of peerless biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, goes deeper than any previous biographer in the quest to solve the enigma of Oppenheimer’s motivations and his complex personality.
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A comprehensive biography
- By Jean on 10-17-14
By: Ray Monk
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Hood
- Trailblazer of the Genomics Age
- By: Luke Timmerman, David Baltimore
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Lee Hood did that rarest of things. He enabled scientists to see things they couldn't see before and do things they hadn't dreamed of doing. Scientists can now sequence complete human genomes in a day, setting in motion a revolution that is personalizing medicine. Hood, a son of the American West, was an unlikely candidate to transform biology. But with ferocious drive, he led a team at Caltech that developed the automated DNA sequencer, the tool that paved the way for the Human Genome Project.
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A Revealing Biography
- By Jean on 07-27-17
By: Luke Timmerman, and others
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Influenza
- The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?
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Important read
- By Kathryn C. on 12-21-18
By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
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Big Science
- Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Bob Saouer
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the 1930s, the scale of scientific endeavors has grown exponentially. The birth of Big Science can be traced to Berkeley, California, nearly nine decades ago, when a resourceful young scientist pondered his new invention and declared, "I'm going to be famous!" Ernest Orlando Lawrence's cyclotron would revolutionize nuclear physics, but that was only the beginning of its impact.This is the incredible story of how one invention changed the world and of the man principally responsible for it all. Michael Hiltzik tells the riveting full story here for the first time.
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An informative and thought-provoking book
- By Jean on 08-23-15
By: Michael Hiltzik
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Ravenous
- Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection
- By: Sam Apple
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a man whose research was integral to humanity’s understanding of cancer. He was also among the most despised figures in Nazi Germany. As a Jewish homosexual living openly with his male partner, Warburg represented all that the Third Reich abhorred. Yet Hitler and his top advisors dreaded cancer, and protected Warburg in the hope that he could cure it.
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Highly recommended, a must read.
- By Joerg on 06-10-21
By: Sam Apple
What listeners say about Insulin: The Crooked Timber
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Shager670
- 08-28-22
Very interesting, but sometimes too technical
I wanted to understand more about insulin, particularly given the “insulin costs too much” issue currently in the news. Didn’t get as much insight into that as hoped, but did learn a lot about diabetes, the discovery of insulin and the extensive work required to make it into a deliverable drug.
Things to complain about:
It can be a fire hose of technical detail. I actually slowed it down to 0.9X speed to try to understand better, and left the whole book at that speed. (Usually I speed them up).
Too much info on jealousies among researchers. Doesn’t add much to understanding the subject.
Despite those issues, I recommend this book.
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