Providing evidence of the two types of diabetes — a step that changed the concepts, research and treatment of diabetes.
Today it seems obvious that type 1 and type 2 diabetes are distinct conditions, requiring different approaches to treatment and care. But in the late 1940s, this was far from settled science.
Baker Institute researchers noticed something that didn't fit the prevailing view — the severity of a patient's diabetes didn't appear to be related to their insulin dose. That observation led them to a bold hypothesis: that some people with diabetes were producing insulin and others were not. When they measured insulin levels in their patients' plasma, they found the first confirmation of what would become one of the most important distinctions in modern medicine.
The findings were ahead of their time — so far ahead, in fact, that they weren't published initially, as the concept was considered too contrary to accepted thinking. But one of the team's researchers went on to confirm the results at King's College Hospital in London, and in 1951 the work was published in the British Medical Journal under Bornstein and Lawrence, with credit to the original Baker Institute studies.
This pioneering work reshaped how diabetes is understood, researched and treated across the world.
