Every six months, the head of the U.S. Fed testifies before Congress.
In her testimony on Wednesday, nearly all of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's comments simply reiterated what had already been communicated by Fed officials.
However, she did provide one new piece of information regarding future Fed policy which caused a significant reaction. Yellen said that the Fed would not have to raise the federal funds rate "all that much further" to reach a "neutral policy stance," which is the rate which neither helps nor hinders economic growth.
The practical implication of a lower "neutral" rate is that the Fed would stop raising rates sooner than investors had previously expected.
A potentially smaller number of future rate hikes is undoubtedly good news for mortgage rates.
In her testimony on Wednesday, nearly all of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's comments simply reiterated what had already been communicated by Fed officials.
However, she did provide one new piece of information regarding future Fed policy which caused a significant reaction. Yellen said that the Fed would not have to raise the federal funds rate "all that much further" to reach a "neutral policy stance," which is the rate which neither helps nor hinders economic growth.
The practical implication of a lower "neutral" rate is that the Fed would stop raising rates sooner than investors had previously expected.
A potentially smaller number of future rate hikes is undoubtedly good news for mortgage rates.
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. ~ Albert Einstein
Diabetes itself had been understood by its symptoms as far back as the 1600s - and the urination and thirst associated with it had been recognized thousands of years before.
A feared and usually deadly disease, doctors in the nineteenth century knew that sugar worsened diabetes and that limited help could be given by dietary restriction of sugar. But if that helped, it also caused death from starvation.
On the night of 31 October 1920, after reading a routine article in a medical journal while preparing a talk to medical students, FrederickBanting wrote down an idea for research aimed at isolating an internal secretion of the pancreas that might prove to be a cure for diabetes — a substance long sought by other researchers.
The next morning, he discussed the idea with F.R. Miller, a professor of physiology at Western, who advised him to seek support for his proposed research at the University of Toronto.
On 17 May 1921, Banting began work under the direction of Professor J.J.R. Macleod and assisted by C.H. Best.
Banting's and Best's experiments in the summer and autumn of 1921 were crudely conducted and did not substantiate Banting's idea, which was physiologically unsound.
Banting had left London and risked all of his meager assets on the research in Toronto. However, he and Best did achieve favourable enough results treating some symptoms in diabetic dogs that Macleodapproved further experimentation and an expansion of the research team.
It was in 1921 that Canadian physician Frederick Banting and medical student Charles H. Best would be credited with discovering the hormone insulin in the pancreatic extracts of dogs.
Banting and Best injected the hormone into a dog and found that it lowered high blood glucose levels to normal. They then perfected their experiments to the point of grinding up and filtering a dog's surgically tied pancreas, isolating a substance called "isletin."
The pair then developed insulin for human treatment with the help of Canadian chemist James B. Collip and Scottish physiologist J.J.R.Macleod.
Macleod had been impressed with Banting and Best's work but wanted a retrial of the evidence. He provided pancreases from cows to make the extract which was named "insulin," and the procedures were repeated.
Collip's role was to help with purifying the insulin to be used for testing on humans.
Ultimately, the first medical success was with a boy with type 1 diabetes - 14-year-old Leonard Thompson - who was successfully treated in 1922.
Close to death before treatment, Leonard bounced back to life with the insulin.
Insulin was immediately and spectacularly effective: not a cure, but a powerful lifesaving therapy for diabetes mellitus.
Frederick Banting was hailed as the principal discoverer of insulin because his idea had launched the research and because of his prominence in the early use of insulin.
The Nobel Prize Committee in Sweden recognized the contributions of both Banting and Macleod in this important discovery.
On learning that he was to share the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Macleod, Banting gave half his prize money to Best.
Macleod gave half his prize money to Collip.
Banting was awarded a lifetime annuity by the Government of Canada, was appointed Canada's first professor of medical research at the University of Toronto and was knighted in 1934. He was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. ~ Michael Bliss
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