The invention of the EpiPen

In the 1970s, engineer Sheldon Kaplan and his colleagues were tasked with creating an auto-injector pen to be used by US soldiers needing a nerve agent antidote.The Pentagon called it the ComboPen but, in 1987, it was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the EpiPen, for patients with allergies.The device is carried by millions of people all over the world as it can quickly and easily deliver a shot of adrenaline to anyone at risk of death from anaphylactic shock.Sheldon Kaplan died in 2009 and was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2016.Sheldon’s son Michael Kaplan and colleague Michael Mesa tell Vicky Farncombe the story behind the pen.

Om Podcasten

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.