Int'l competition spurs penicillin production as American Pfizer/Dawson goes against British ICI/Florey for most production

Wartime penicillin production was greatly hurt , not helped , when Florey came to America.

Because then an Anglo-American cartel emerged that focused on restricting what firms could produce penicillin - rather than increasing competition to produce more penicillin.

Already in September 1941, fermentation experts Pfizer and their advisor Dr Dawson were already producing commercially-oriented penicillin in the USA - without government inference or 'help' .

As was Florey's team and chemical giant ICI in the UK, again without government 'help'.

This was before Florey's across the ocean visit to his good American friend Dr A N Richards.

That led to Richard's decision to abuse the extraordinary wartime powers of American's main military research agency (the OSRD) to create an international penicillin cartel.

Only when Dawson's former patient and friend Floyd Odlum induced the equally powerful (but New Dealer oriented) WPB agency to open up penicillin production to more firms, did the spur of competition finally produce massive amounts of penicillin.

But what if Florey had stayed home instead of coming to America to mark his claim to penicillin fame over that of Dawson ?

The normally cautious Pfizer had been very bold once before - risking all on a new method of producing citric acid and ending up very wealthy.

If it decided to go all out for penicillin in 1941-1942 as it did in 1943-1944 , there would have been no wartime penicillin shortage crisis....