The first attempt to isolate a pancreatic extract by means of which the levels of blood glucose could be normalised in dogs was described by a Romanian researcher called Nicolae Paulescu1, but his experiments were interrupted by the First World War and were never acknowledged appropriately. However, after the war, in 1921, a young surgeon named Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best, from the University of Toronto, worked out how to remove insulin from a dog’s pancreas. With this extract, Banting and Best kept another dog with severe diabetes alive for 70 days—the dog died only when there was no more extract. With this success, the researchers, along with the help of colleagues J.B. Collip and John Macleod, went a step further2. The extract was purified by Collip, and saved the lives of people dying from diabetes for the first time in January 1922. The Nobel prize was awarded to Banting and MacLeod for this discovery. Banting shared his prize money with Best who helped him with the experiments and MacLeod shared his part with Collip who purified the extract3.
This is where it gets personal for me. My mother’s eldest sister, Christina (known by all the family as ‘Ina’ [as in China]) was born in 1907, and the story goes that she was the victim of a traumatic event in her early teens, when her dress caught alight in front of an open fire, supposedly causing her to subsequently develop diabetes. Her parents were told that she was likely to survive only another few months. In the meantime, insulin became available and my Auntie Ina survived for another 45 years or so, dying in 1969. At that time she was one of the longest surviving diabetics in Australia. I loved visiting her and her husband, Uncle Charlie. She always had a wagon wheel (chocolate-coated biscuit) or two for me to munch on, and they had a pianola, which I could play. Over the years, Auntie Ina had several pet budgerigars, which would fly about the house, and I can remember seeing her walking around the kitchen with a budgie perched on the top of her head.
A day or so ago, I watched the ABC’s Compass television program4, and it was a story about the death of a young girl of 8, Elizabeth Struhs, who was a diabetic. The girl’s parents belonged to a religious cult, known to themselves as ‘The Saints’. In 2022, her insulin was withheld because the cult opposed medical care and believed their god would heal her. She died from diabetic ketoacidosis, a dangerous buildup of ketones in the blood. After she died, these deluded idiots prayed for her to be resurrected5. I just shook my head in disbelief.
The cult’s leader, the ‘dangerously manipulative’ Brendan Stevens was put on trial for murder but was convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Stevens’ wife, Loretta was sentenced to nine years in prison. Elizabeth’s parents were both convicted of manslaughter and were each sentenced to 14 years in prison. Twelve other members of the cult, including Elizabeth’s brother, were also convicted of manslaughter. All had pleaded not guilty. They were given sentences of between six and nine years in prison6.
Why people get sucked into cults is something I don’t understand. However, others have studied cults and people’s susceptibility to them. One paper I stumbled across maintained that there are a number of factors which make people susceptible to recruitment by cults. These factors include (a) generalised ego-weakness and emotional vulnerability, (b) propensities toward dissociative states, (c) tenuous, deteriorated, or nonexistent family relations and support systems, (d) inadequate means of dealing with the exigencies of survival, (e) history of severe child abuse or neglect, (f) exposure to idiosyncratic or eccentric family patterns, (g) proclivities toward or abuse of controlled substances, (h) unmanageable and debilitating situational stress and crises, and (i) intolerable socioeconomic conditions. In addition, the cults also use intimidation, coercion and indoctrination, for systematically recruiting, initiating, and influencing inductees7.
While I doubt the killers of Elizabeth Struhs will ever acknowledge their criminal stupidity, they will have plenty of time to think about it as they fester in prison.
Sources
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8919497/
- https://diabetes.org/blog/history-wonderful-thing-we-call-insulin
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168822721001789
- https://iview.abc.net.au/show/compass
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74mjxmg10zo
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-26/elizabeth-struhs-manslaughter-religious-group-sentencing/104938208
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8234595/
Appalling. Judge appears to have got everything right, unlike plenty of others where leniency (esp bail for serious offences) has led to even worse outcomes for subsequent victims.