In the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of wartime penicillin it should hardly be surprising that about the only strong supporters of natural ,biological, penicillin in the upper echelons of the overall enterprise were two professional chemists : Larry Elder of the American Office for Production Research and Development (the OPRD) and Harry Jephcott of the British drug company, Glaxo.
Or that the group most strongly bewitched by the thought of synthetic penicillin were a bunch of medical doctors with Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming leading the charge (with the OSRD and MRC close behind): the sort of scientists who might have been thought would normally occupy a place at the biological end of hard science.....
Showing posts with label larry elder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label larry elder. Show all posts
Friday, January 4, 2013
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Between Wartime Penicillin's initial failure ( Chemistry) and its final success (Biology) stood a third party : the humanitarians
When I call Henry Dawson "Penicillin's Third Man", I am being more than ordinarily facetious.
Penicilin's problem was chemistry-besotted biologists, the solution was biologically-pragmatic chemists and the connecting threat were a tiny group of humanitarian-minded clinicians.
I mean that penicillin's main problem was - dating from September 1928 - was that its initial (biological) investigators -names like Fleming,Florey and Richards spring to mind - tacitly accepted penicillium production levels of one microgram of penicillin per gram of medium as a given.
As a result, they sought - blinker-eyed - only one possible solution : the total chemical synthesis of penicillin.
By contrast, it was chemist Larry Elder who finally pushed mycologists into doing their jobs like people on a mission, not people politely going through the motions.
And it was Larry who sought out "farmer-minded" scientists from any and all fields to up penicillium yields the old-fashioned way, the way farmers had successfully done so with other species for thousands of years : trial and error selective breeding.
But before people like Larry could be called in on the file, the public in September 1943 had to be outraged, ("its been 15 years since penicillin was discovered and its still in desperately short supply !") and demanding that the authorities put new people on the job to finally start making this stuff - now - and in bulk.
The humanitarians like Henry Dawson, Robert Pulvertaft, Rudy Schulinger , Frank Queen and Dante Colitti all pushed the civil and military powers to be to make penicillin available for all who are dying - now !
And when the purple-toned slash yellow press of Citizen Hearst picked up on their efforts, all the pieces fell into place.
In less than six months, the government of America was pulling a little bit of its money out from making nuclear bombs and germ warfare and towards saving lives and the job was done.
America - and soon the world - would be awash with cheap naturally-breed penicillium-made penicillin....
Penicilin's problem was chemistry-besotted biologists, the solution was biologically-pragmatic chemists and the connecting threat were a tiny group of humanitarian-minded clinicians.
I mean that penicillin's main problem was - dating from September 1928 - was that its initial (biological) investigators -names like Fleming,Florey and Richards spring to mind - tacitly accepted penicillium production levels of one microgram of penicillin per gram of medium as a given.
As a result, they sought - blinker-eyed - only one possible solution : the total chemical synthesis of penicillin.
By contrast, it was chemist Larry Elder who finally pushed mycologists into doing their jobs like people on a mission, not people politely going through the motions.
And it was Larry who sought out "farmer-minded" scientists from any and all fields to up penicillium yields the old-fashioned way, the way farmers had successfully done so with other species for thousands of years : trial and error selective breeding.
But before people like Larry could be called in on the file, the public in September 1943 had to be outraged, ("its been 15 years since penicillin was discovered and its still in desperately short supply !") and demanding that the authorities put new people on the job to finally start making this stuff - now - and in bulk.
Elder, Colitti, Queen, Hearst never get the credit they deserve
The humanitarians like Henry Dawson, Robert Pulvertaft, Rudy Schulinger , Frank Queen and Dante Colitti all pushed the civil and military powers to be to make penicillin available for all who are dying - now !
And when the purple-toned slash yellow press of Citizen Hearst picked up on their efforts, all the pieces fell into place.
In less than six months, the government of America was pulling a little bit of its money out from making nuclear bombs and germ warfare and towards saving lives and the job was done.
America - and soon the world - would be awash with cheap naturally-breed penicillium-made penicillin....
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