You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Vicky Vancombe. I'm taking you back to the 1970s and the invention of an adrenaline

auto injector pen that would come to be known as the epipen. I feel like he put in tremendous work and unfortunately didn't get his due during his lifetime but he is now.

I'm extremely grateful his name is going to be remembered in line with this product.

That's Michael Kaplan whose dad Sheldon invented the epipen,

the life-saving device carried by millions of allergy sufferers all over the world.

The pen works by quickly delivering a large dose of adrenaline,

also known as epinephrine, to counter the effects of a potentially

fatal allergic reaction.

Dr. Chris Van Tullicon on the BBC Children's Program Operation Och, produced by Maverick Television,

explained how the device could save someone suffering from a nut allergy.

Basically your immune system recognizes the nut of something bad and you get swelling all over your body.

Swelling is very dangerous if it's happening in your mouth or in your throat because it stops

you breathing.

Now the epipen is full of a hormone called adrenaline when you inject it will tighten up

your blood vessels and decrease the swelling and allow you to breathe again.

So if you're carrying an epipen you are safe. But the pen's first use

was not for allergy sufferers. In the early 1970s engineers at Survival Technology

a medical device company in Maryland in the US were tasked with creating a

product which could administer a large amount of a drug in a very short amount of time.

The idea had come about after one of the company's founders had been at a military medical conference. And at that conference they

were talking about how hard it was to get a soldier to inject himself when he was trying to treat himself for nerve agent poisoning.

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