Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
One night in 1984, British scientist Frances Ashcroft was studying electricity in the body and discovered the protein that causes neonatal diabetes. She says she felt so "over the moon" that she couldn't sleep.
By the next morning, she says, she thought it was a mistake.
But luckily, that feeling was wrong, and Ashcroft's revelation led to a medical breakthrough decades later, which now enables people born with diabetes to take pills instead of injecting insulin.
"I don't think people realize the excitement of being a true discoverer," Ashcroft tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There are no new places to discover on this Earth, but there are many, many new ideas to discover ? new things to find out about the way the world works."
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/27/161888074/british-scientist-driven-to-find-spark-of-life
By the next morning, she says, she thought it was a mistake.
But luckily, that feeling was wrong, and Ashcroft's revelation led to a medical breakthrough decades later, which now enables people born with diabetes to take pills instead of injecting insulin.
"I don't think people realize the excitement of being a true discoverer," Ashcroft tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There are no new places to discover on this Earth, but there are many, many new ideas to discover ? new things to find out about the way the world works."
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/27/161888074/british-scientist-driven-to-find-spark-of-life