This past Tuesday, President Joe Biden made the odd claim that he spoke with the doctor — a doctor that made a selfless decision when he refused to officially patent the drug in order to profit from its use worldwide — however, Dr. Frederick banting actually died close to two years prior to the president being born.
Old Uncle Joe stepped up to talk about what his administration had been doing to assist in the dropping of health care costs for the average American family, bragging about his efforts to actually bring down the direct cost to consumers for various prescription drugs such as insulin — and he made the claim to have had a conversation with the doctor that had invented it.
WATCH:
Joe Biden claims that he spoke to the man who invented insulin. pic.twitter.com/FLjIZ1jPdE
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 1, 2022
“How many of you know somebody with diabetes? Needs insulin?” questioned Biden as he walked back and forth around the podium. “Well, guess what? And … when we … when Debbie and I passed this law, it included everybody — not just seniors.”
“And so, what happened was, we said okay, you know how much it costs to make that insulin drug for diabetes? Cost,” Biden went on. “It was invented by a man who did not patent it because he wanted it available for everyone. I spoke to him, okay?”
Despite these claims, Dr. Frederick Banting, who was one of the doctors credited with the discovery of insulin back in 1921 — while refusing to put his name on the patent — actually passed away back in February of 1941. The issue with this is that President Biden was not born until November of 1942, almost 21 full months after the doctor’s death.
Banting was issued the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923 in the wake of his discovery. Dr. Charles Best, his assistant, was a medical student at that time and helped with the discovery. He did sign his name to the patent, along with that of Dr. James Bertram Collip, who assist in the refinery of the discovery, but the pair solt the patent over to the University of Toronto for a sum of $1.
All three doctors expressed that it would be entirely unethical for them to take profits from a discovery that could end up potentially saving thousands if not millions of lives.
Physiologist John MacLeod, who also chose not to sign his name to the patent, played some role in its discovery but passed away earlier in 1935. While both Drs. Collip and Best were still around after Biden was born, he claimed it was not them who he spoke to because they did actually put their names on the patent.
