Dr. Michael Weiss

 

Chairman of the
Department of biochemistry
at case Western Reserve University

 

by Shanaya Howard, crew 6

 

 

Have you ever been motivated to do something and stuck to it? Many people don’t stick to their goals and stay with them. Michael Weiss was motivated and he was serious in what he was doing. He tried and tried to make non-refrigerated insulin. Despite the many challenges and obstacles he faced, Dr. Weiss believes that’s his “stick –to-it-ness” ultimately helped him succeed in creating the first heat stable insulin.

 

Dr. Weiss says he has his mathematics professor at Case Western Reserve University to thank   him for helping him begin his journey towards creating this amazing medical adventure. He encouraged him to go to Harvard University. Dr. Weiss said that he was lucky enough to get into Harvard University for medical school. While he was there he took a trip to Africa. His trip to Africa made him make the invention he is making now. He was there that year and he found out people with diabetes put insulin underground so the sun wouldn’t beam on it because insulin is ruined if it gets too hot. Some people need to take their shots everyday if they have diabetes so if they take hot insulin and it would not do what it is supposed to do. If you keep taking it you would be very ill. So now he is trying to make non-refrigerated insulin. This inspired him because he knew people would die if they didn’t have insulin. He saw what they went through with no insulin and he did some research so he could make non-refrigerated insulin. This is how the journey began.

 

Michael Weiss went through a lot to make his invention. It took him 25 years to make his invention. In the 25 years he was doing many things. He went to Africa and did some research about how they keep their insulin cool instead of hot. He found out that they put their insulin underground so the sun won’t beam on it and make it hot. When they came back to Cleveland they were trying to get permission from the FDA to test their insulin on volunteers to see how it worked so they could take the insulin to Africa. He took his students to regions of Bangladesh because there is an epidemic of diabetes and a lot of poverty. While they were there they did even more research on insulin. Once the drug gets approved he is hoping to take it to Africa and hand it out for free. By the time the medication is approved Dr. Weiss thinks that he will be close to retirement.

 

Even though Michael Weiss is very successful he went through some failures too. The first time someone does something it doesn’t always work out. One example was when he tried to make the non- refrigerated insulin. At first it didn’t work out. But he persevered through it and kept going and it’s paying off little by little. It will work if somebody put their heart in to it. Michael Weiss said” the key thing is to be able to go form failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm.” His ability to do this in his quest to create heart stable insulin is one of the main factors that helped him to be successful.

 

Some hopes Michael Weiss has is that the insulin is “safe and effective” to test in Africa. In Africa some villages have 1 refrigerator that they share. Dr. Weiss and his team hope that in the future their insulin works the way it’s supposed to work. He said, “I hope that in the future, after we get an approval in the U.S that our insulin is safe and effective, lives of the underprivileged people there will be improved by using this invention.”  He said that he hopes the invention is done by the time he retires. “I think I’ll be close to the end of my career when we hope our inventions will be used around the world.”

 

Michael Weiss’s invention will be very successful in the future. It will help people all around the world that really need insulin. It will pay off in the long run. Michael Weiss is a good person for making this invention because it will save many people’s lives and it inspires me to accomplish what I want when I grow up.