President Joe Biden misrepresented the history of insulin during his State of the Union address Tuesday.
"[Insulin] has been around for over a hundred years. The guy who invented it didn't even patent it because he wanted it to be available for everyone," Biden said.
While getting the timeline roughly correct, Biden misrepresented how insulin came about and the patent process.
Insulin was not "invented," it was discovered. Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best discovered how to extract insulin from a dog's pancreas in 1921. The first human was injected with the substance in 1922 after a refinement and purification process was developed, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Contrary to Biden's statement, Banting, Best, and chemist James Collip were awarded the American patents to insulin in 1923. However, they sold it to the University of Toronto for $1 each, according to T1 International.
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“Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world,” Banting said, somewhat reflecting Biden's paraphrasing.