If Vannevar Bush and Winston Churchill had had their way, penicillin would have become a secret and exclusive weapon of war, just as DDT and atomic energy became during WWII.
But penicillin escaped this fate, thanks to Dr Martin Henry Dawson's "Big Tent" Manhattan Project.
Dawson thought that natural penicillin - cheap abundant "PD" penicillin - should be made available to all in the world in need of its lifesaving properties.
Particularly during a total war against a evil Axis.
As a concrete example of how the Allies really were different from Hitler - and not just differing only in their high-sounding (but ultimately hollow) rhetoric.
Doctors without Frontiers didn't emerge formally for twenty five years after Dawson's premature death, but if he had lived, he would have cheered its birth to the rafters....
Showing posts with label vannevar bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vannevar bush. Show all posts
Friday, October 2, 2015
Thursday, October 1, 2015
A NEW Manhattan project to solve our human-caused environmental crisis ? Oh God !
If the gameplan of the Manhattan atomic Project is followed once again, foreigners will do most of the heavy lifting while America will gets most of the credit, the profits and the protection.
If we continue to rely on Vannevar Bush's way of thinking, of relying upon good old Chip and Buffy (and Gordie Gekko) down at the good old country club, we'll never solve this crisis.
We need an inclusive effort, not an exclusive one --- we need Emily Lazarus's vision of a Big Tent Manhattan, a coalition of the all the possible talents around the world, to save the whole world.
And let us never forget that the very first man-made global environmental crisis was the global fallout of atomic radiation from that supposedly so wonderful Manhattan atomic Project...
If we continue to rely on Vannevar Bush's way of thinking, of relying upon good old Chip and Buffy (and Gordie Gekko) down at the good old country club, we'll never solve this crisis.
We need an inclusive effort, not an exclusive one --- we need Emily Lazarus's vision of a Big Tent Manhattan, a coalition of the all the possible talents around the world, to save the whole world.
And let us never forget that the very first man-made global environmental crisis was the global fallout of atomic radiation from that supposedly so wonderful Manhattan atomic Project...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
A centralized "Penicillin Los Alamos" would have cost ten of millions of lives
Thank God, thank God, thank God ----- for unanswered prayers.
Thank God that all penicillin research was not as centralized as the atomic bomb research effort was.
Because the overwhelming consensus of the loudest, most aggressive, most powerful voices in science held a rigid dogma that synthesis was the only way forward for wartime penicillin.
But wartime (& postwar) penicillin synthesis efforts proved a total failure.
A total waste.
Thank God , not so much in money lost, but a total waste of lots and lots of lost precious time.
(Pause here to say a prayer for all the poor mommies that needn't have died and to all the daddies and kiddies that grieved their loss).
But among the many small, diverse, de-centralized, home-made,amateur, DIY, stones that these bull-headed builders rejected (the humble people who actually gave us our precious age of antibiotics) let me cite but one example.
His name is Milislav Demerec, wartime head of the Cold Spring Harbour Institute which until then was known mostly as the Eugenics Movement's main research centre.
Early in the war, Demerec, acting as a patriotic individual and not as representing his Institution's collective opinion, suggested that a mini radiation attack (from a suntan lamp) on the growing penicillium spores.
He reasoned the radiation might kill most of them but might also throw up mutations with extraordinary penicillin producing qualities.
("What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger" ?)
He was totally ignored by Penicillin Central (Vannevar Bush's OSRD) but Bush's much smaller rival in Washington's bureaucratic conflicts (always America's real war), the WPB's OPRD, took up his idea.
His idea worked so well that today the best in the little penicilliums produce 50,000 times as much as they did back in 1940 !
So even if it had been possible to commercially synthesize penicillin , it would only be so at a cost level thousands of times above the little ones' efforts.
It took a 'coalition of all possible talents', small as well as big, a Big Big Tent, to bring wartime penicillin forth.
So, truly, FP Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" might have just as accurately labelled "Big (Tents) are always Better".
But he didn't --------- and I just did.....
Thank God that all penicillin research was not as centralized as the atomic bomb research effort was.
Because the overwhelming consensus of the loudest, most aggressive, most powerful voices in science held a rigid dogma that synthesis was the only way forward for wartime penicillin.
But wartime (& postwar) penicillin synthesis efforts proved a total failure.
A total waste.
Thank God , not so much in money lost, but a total waste of lots and lots of lost precious time.
(Pause here to say a prayer for all the poor mommies that needn't have died and to all the daddies and kiddies that grieved their loss).
"Big (Tents) are always Better"
But among the many small, diverse, de-centralized, home-made,amateur, DIY, stones that these bull-headed builders rejected (the humble people who actually gave us our precious age of antibiotics) let me cite but one example.
His name is Milislav Demerec, wartime head of the Cold Spring Harbour Institute which until then was known mostly as the Eugenics Movement's main research centre.
Early in the war, Demerec, acting as a patriotic individual and not as representing his Institution's collective opinion, suggested that a mini radiation attack (from a suntan lamp) on the growing penicillium spores.
He reasoned the radiation might kill most of them but might also throw up mutations with extraordinary penicillin producing qualities.
("What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger" ?)
He was totally ignored by Penicillin Central (Vannevar Bush's OSRD) but Bush's much smaller rival in Washington's bureaucratic conflicts (always America's real war), the WPB's OPRD, took up his idea.
His idea worked so well that today the best in the little penicilliums produce 50,000 times as much as they did back in 1940 !
So even if it had been possible to commercially synthesize penicillin , it would only be so at a cost level thousands of times above the little ones' efforts.
It took a 'coalition of all possible talents', small as well as big, a Big Big Tent, to bring wartime penicillin forth.
So, truly, FP Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" might have just as accurately labelled "Big (Tents) are always Better".
But he didn't --------- and I just did.....
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
"Primitive Penicillin For Everyone, Now !"
By 1945, this was Henry Dawson's winning approach in the battle over what direction wartime penicillin should take.
Of course, that year the Swedes chose to give their Nobel Prize to the losing side in this debate over penicillin's course, rewarding it to losers Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey.
Label the losers' approach as "Synthetic Penicillin For Some, Someday."
On October 16th 1940, Dawson considered primitive penicillin (concentrated, semi-purified excretions from the tiny penicillium) fully ready for primetime.
Fully ready to inject - now ! - into dying patients, civilian or serviceman, of all races, genders and incomes, in an effort to save their life when nothing else worked.
Good enough to put into unlimited mass production - by government owned plants if need be.
By contrast, his opponents in the medical establishments of Britain and America - people like Fleming and Florey and their warm friends at Vannevar's OSRD and at Merck - didn't want penicillin to go into (limited) mass production until it had been synthesized by big Pharma, if and when that ever came about.
(It never has been totally synthesized commercially and we still have Dawson's primitive penicillium making the base penicillin that lies behind all our best antibiotics to this day.)
Even if it was synthesized to produce a cheap and abundant pure penicillin, the drug was still to be held back, for use as a secret weapon of war, rather than to be used among the general soldier and civilian population, saving lives.
Penicillin was intended to finally be introduced only on D-Day, to the total surprise of the Germans.
All to return lightly wounded Allied combat troops back into the line of fire far faster than what the Germans could for their lightly wounded with only Sulfa drugs at their command, giving the Allies a little extra break at the odds.
If I was telling this tale to daycare kids like Sam, I say it was a argument between giving small penicillin to small people versus giving Big penicillin to Big people....
Of course, that year the Swedes chose to give their Nobel Prize to the losing side in this debate over penicillin's course, rewarding it to losers Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey.
Label the losers' approach as "Synthetic Penicillin For Some, Someday."
On October 16th 1940, Dawson considered primitive penicillin (concentrated, semi-purified excretions from the tiny penicillium) fully ready for primetime.
Fully ready to inject - now ! - into dying patients, civilian or serviceman, of all races, genders and incomes, in an effort to save their life when nothing else worked.
Good enough to put into unlimited mass production - by government owned plants if need be.
By contrast, his opponents in the medical establishments of Britain and America - people like Fleming and Florey and their warm friends at Vannevar's OSRD and at Merck - didn't want penicillin to go into (limited) mass production until it had been synthesized by big Pharma, if and when that ever came about.
(It never has been totally synthesized commercially and we still have Dawson's primitive penicillium making the base penicillin that lies behind all our best antibiotics to this day.)
Even if it was synthesized to produce a cheap and abundant pure penicillin, the drug was still to be held back, for use as a secret weapon of war, rather than to be used among the general soldier and civilian population, saving lives.
Penicillin was intended to finally be introduced only on D-Day, to the total surprise of the Germans.
All to return lightly wounded Allied combat troops back into the line of fire far faster than what the Germans could for their lightly wounded with only Sulfa drugs at their command, giving the Allies a little extra break at the odds.
If I was telling this tale to daycare kids like Sam, I say it was a argument between giving small penicillin to small people versus giving Big penicillin to Big people....
Saturday, June 27, 2015
WWII's battling Penicillins, Ancient and Modern : Who makes it ? Who receives it ?
Initially the Allied medical-scientific elite had planned that penicillin was to made the modern way, man-made by synthetic chemists in huge factories.
And then it was to only be distributed, during wartime, to lightly wounded frontline Allied troops, after the surprise D-Day landings had been successful.
In the end, thankfully nothing of this horrific scheme came to pass.
For a start, no commercial synthetic penicillin was ever made during WWII (and still hasn't happened yet).
Instead ancient, tiny but highly efficient penicillium factories made penicillin production seem effortless and easy, rather like Nijinsky dancing ballet.
Manhattan doctor Martin Henry Dawson had introduced the penicillin-making fungus to Brooklyn soda pop industry supplier Charles Pfizer & Co and Pfizer alone made 85% of the penicillin landed on the D-Day beaches.
Pfizer made so much penicillin in 1944 that it could - all by itself - supply enough penicillin to treat all those in the world dying for lack of it.
And it found governments suddenly willing to buy all that naturally-made penicillin and to distribute to all in need, without fear or favour.
Because Dr Dawson had also introduced the lifesaving capabilities of penicillin to WPB heavyweight Floyd Odlum.
And it was the WPB's OPRD that overruled Vannevar Bush's ORSD, together with Sir Howard Florey & Sir Alexander Fleming, in their desire to only use wartime penicillin as a secret weapon of war.
Instead the OPRD picked up on Dawson's efforts to see that wartime penicillin was distributed to all in need of it.
The terminally-ill Dawson had started his penicillin-for-all crusade in October 1940, given history's first ever antibiotic injections to two minority patients he knew would be denied real medical care under the guise of 'we need all resources to go to front line troops'.
He lived just long enough to see his efforts come to full fruition ...
And then it was to only be distributed, during wartime, to lightly wounded frontline Allied troops, after the surprise D-Day landings had been successful.
In the end, thankfully nothing of this horrific scheme came to pass.
For a start, no commercial synthetic penicillin was ever made during WWII (and still hasn't happened yet).
Instead ancient, tiny but highly efficient penicillium factories made penicillin production seem effortless and easy, rather like Nijinsky dancing ballet.
Manhattan doctor Martin Henry Dawson had introduced the penicillin-making fungus to Brooklyn soda pop industry supplier Charles Pfizer & Co and Pfizer alone made 85% of the penicillin landed on the D-Day beaches.
Pfizer made so much penicillin in 1944 that it could - all by itself - supply enough penicillin to treat all those in the world dying for lack of it.
And it found governments suddenly willing to buy all that naturally-made penicillin and to distribute to all in need, without fear or favour.
Because Dr Dawson had also introduced the lifesaving capabilities of penicillin to WPB heavyweight Floyd Odlum.
And it was the WPB's OPRD that overruled Vannevar Bush's ORSD, together with Sir Howard Florey & Sir Alexander Fleming, in their desire to only use wartime penicillin as a secret weapon of war.
Instead the OPRD picked up on Dawson's efforts to see that wartime penicillin was distributed to all in need of it.
The terminally-ill Dawson had started his penicillin-for-all crusade in October 1940, given history's first ever antibiotic injections to two minority patients he knew would be denied real medical care under the guise of 'we need all resources to go to front line troops'.
He lived just long enough to see his efforts come to full fruition ...
Friday, June 12, 2015
When a scientific consensus was proven wrong : DNA and Penicillium
Dr Martin Henry Dawson was widely considered a minor medical researcher, all because he had bet on two clearly losing horses.
In 2020, it might no longer be seen that way.
In the first case back in between the wars, the general scientific consensus was that large proteins had to be complicated and hence 'smart' and long chains of mere repeating acids had to be simple and hence 'stupid'.
So when Dawson's pioneering 1920s test tube research on the ability of some bacteria to take up the genes of other species (today known as HGT) led to one of these long simple repeating chains rather than to a protein, the scientific jungle telegraph dot dashed out a signal : "Dawson --- dead wrong, dead end !"
But of course, the telegraph signal is itself nothing but long chains of very simple repeating sub units, a mere dot and a dash, yet it has no problem transmitting the most complicated examples of human reasoning perfectly accurately.
And so to with the simple-appearing DNA .
For as it turns out, it (the tortoise not the hare) was the actual brains behind genetics, while the complicated protein was merely a (highly useful) spindle for the coil of DNA.
Bacteria, it seems, can smoothly nip and tuck DNA bits and bobs ( genes basically) and we humans still can't.
Oh, we appear to, but actually we let the bacteria take all the hard work while we take all the credit.
Round One, ultimately, to Dr Dawson.
During WWII, many scientists again thought Dawson had backed the wrong horse.
They felt that he had chosen, in effect, to endanger dying patients by delivering Vitamin C via old fashioned crude un-purified natural orange juice rather than via modern, progressive pure synthetic Vitamin C pills.
For in 1940, the scientific consensus was that German chemists were very very brilliant and the tiny microbes were very very stupid.
Dawson thought that if supposedly simple bacteria could do excellent gene engineering while Man could only fumble about, maybe other microbes might also be better at certain types of chemistry than even the smartest chemists in the universe.
So Dawson bet that the humble penicillium mold might just do the job of making massive amounts of (admittedly impure but totally safe) penicillin better and cheaper (and certainly quicker) than all that human chemists had produced, after a fifteen years of fruitless trying.
Dawson (along with his fellow believers at Pfizer and the OPRD) were proven spectacularly right and the synthetic-obsessed Nobel Prize winning pair of Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey (along with Merck and Vannevar Bush's feckless OSRD) were proven wrong, wrong, wrong.
We humans - 75 years later - still can't make economical Penicillin G by total synthesis and the little bugs still make it by the tens of thousands of tons, which we then modify to produce most of the antibiotics we use today.
And the wartime efforts of German chemists were even worse when it came to making penicillin (their wartime successes were mostly limited to producing the Zyklon B gas used in the Holocaust.)
If the doubly right Dawson remains unknown today, it is hardly surprising, because a scientist rarely wins fame by bucking a worldwide scientific consensus of their elders.
Now I fully believe the burning of fossil fuels is causing a highly dangerous greenhouse gas effect in our atmosphere -and my view is also the consensus of scientists worldwide.
But I hope that I am still historically-minded enough to recall that many similar scientific consensus in the past have proven to be totally wrong.
Totally, totally, totally wrong ....
In 2020, it might no longer be seen that way.
In the first case back in between the wars, the general scientific consensus was that large proteins had to be complicated and hence 'smart' and long chains of mere repeating acids had to be simple and hence 'stupid'.
So when Dawson's pioneering 1920s test tube research on the ability of some bacteria to take up the genes of other species (today known as HGT) led to one of these long simple repeating chains rather than to a protein, the scientific jungle telegraph dot dashed out a signal : "Dawson --- dead wrong, dead end !"
But of course, the telegraph signal is itself nothing but long chains of very simple repeating sub units, a mere dot and a dash, yet it has no problem transmitting the most complicated examples of human reasoning perfectly accurately.
And so to with the simple-appearing DNA .
For as it turns out, it (the tortoise not the hare) was the actual brains behind genetics, while the complicated protein was merely a (highly useful) spindle for the coil of DNA.
Bacteria, it seems, can smoothly nip and tuck DNA bits and bobs ( genes basically) and we humans still can't.
Oh, we appear to, but actually we let the bacteria take all the hard work while we take all the credit.
Round One, ultimately, to Dr Dawson.
Kitchen Mold
They felt that he had chosen, in effect, to endanger dying patients by delivering Vitamin C via old fashioned crude un-purified natural orange juice rather than via modern, progressive pure synthetic Vitamin C pills.
For in 1940, the scientific consensus was that German chemists were very very brilliant and the tiny microbes were very very stupid.
Dawson thought that if supposedly simple bacteria could do excellent gene engineering while Man could only fumble about, maybe other microbes might also be better at certain types of chemistry than even the smartest chemists in the universe.
So Dawson bet that the humble penicillium mold might just do the job of making massive amounts of (admittedly impure but totally safe) penicillin better and cheaper (and certainly quicker) than all that human chemists had produced, after a fifteen years of fruitless trying.
Dawson (along with his fellow believers at Pfizer and the OPRD) were proven spectacularly right and the synthetic-obsessed Nobel Prize winning pair of Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey (along with Merck and Vannevar Bush's feckless OSRD) were proven wrong, wrong, wrong.
We humans - 75 years later - still can't make economical Penicillin G by total synthesis and the little bugs still make it by the tens of thousands of tons, which we then modify to produce most of the antibiotics we use today.
And the wartime efforts of German chemists were even worse when it came to making penicillin (their wartime successes were mostly limited to producing the Zyklon B gas used in the Holocaust.)
If the doubly right Dawson remains unknown today, it is hardly surprising, because a scientist rarely wins fame by bucking a worldwide scientific consensus of their elders.
Now I fully believe the burning of fossil fuels is causing a highly dangerous greenhouse gas effect in our atmosphere -and my view is also the consensus of scientists worldwide.
But I hope that I am still historically-minded enough to recall that many similar scientific consensus in the past have proven to be totally wrong.
Totally, totally, totally wrong ....
Monday, January 12, 2015
OSRD (and academia's) dirty little secret : just how little the OSRD spent on penicillin - not how MUCH it spent on A-Bomb
Vannevar Bush grew a whole lot fonder of penicillin after it was highly successful (and highly popular among voters and congressmen) than when its future lay in doubt and only he had the power to ensure it succeeded.
The uncomfortable fact is that it was Washington's tiny New Deal-oriented OPRD (and not the similar-sounding but Republican Party-dominated much larger ORSD) that actually gave the world cheap abundant natural penicillin in time to save millions of lives during the wartime and postwar health crises.
While the OPRD had all the ideas and all the energy, it was the OSRD that had all the money --- and all that money bought plenty of tame academics prepared to rewrite war history - for money - in a manner than would have even given Goebbels himself pause.
Bush - never a top drawer scientist but always a Beltway bureaucrat with very sharp elbows - was determined to use the 'miracle of penicillin' as a weapon to bludgeon money out of a hitherto reluctant Congress to fund the postwar dreams of university academics.
But he could only do so if all the university academics kept up their end of the implicit bargain.
That was their agreeing never to probe his claims of wartime 'success' too closely - because frankly, if right wing Bush's legacy was screwed as a result, so would be a whole lot of still living left wing professors also hoping for a pot of federal gold for their pet project....
The uncomfortable fact is that it was Washington's tiny New Deal-oriented OPRD (and not the similar-sounding but Republican Party-dominated much larger ORSD) that actually gave the world cheap abundant natural penicillin in time to save millions of lives during the wartime and postwar health crises.
While the OPRD had all the ideas and all the energy, it was the OSRD that had all the money --- and all that money bought plenty of tame academics prepared to rewrite war history - for money - in a manner than would have even given Goebbels himself pause.
Bush - never a top drawer scientist but always a Beltway bureaucrat with very sharp elbows - was determined to use the 'miracle of penicillin' as a weapon to bludgeon money out of a hitherto reluctant Congress to fund the postwar dreams of university academics.
But he could only do so if all the university academics kept up their end of the implicit bargain.
That was their agreeing never to probe his claims of wartime 'success' too closely - because frankly, if right wing Bush's legacy was screwed as a result, so would be a whole lot of still living left wing professors also hoping for a pot of federal gold for their pet project....
Thursday, November 6, 2014
1945 was a triumph for modernity AND postmodernity
And that can't possibly be !
It would be as if Matter and Anti-Matter went through a revolving door together and yet both emerged equally triumphant.
At the time ( just after September 1945) most militarily-oriented accounts of the end of WWII certainly played the Allied victory as a win-win result for the forces of Modernity against a threatened return to a barbaric dark age --- and many military-oriented accounts of WWII still spin it that way.
'Modern Big Science (here insert radar, jets, atomic bomb and penicillin perhaps) beats back masses of fiercely barbaric atavists'.
But some prescient scholars , even in 1945 , people more attuned to changes in fashions in philosophy and to changes in deep broad cultural life certainly saw that that Dresden, Hiroshima, Auschwitz , the Katyn Forest and the Fall of Singapore had opened up breaches in the old certitudes that time and sunshine couldn't heal.
So seventy years later we can still have dozens and dozens of new books every year focussed on the meaning of the events of 1945 emerging (as it were) from two separate but parallel universes.
1945 is laid out in these parallel but widely separated streams of books as either the birth of modern Big Science and a triumph for modern progressive rational planning ---- or as the beginning of the end of the 400 year old Enlightenment Project.
First, let me make it clear that all those who saw 1945 as a triumph for Enlightenment and Modernity were sincere - and those who still hold these views are equally sincere.
But being sincere and being correct are not the same.
I see this being the result of an inevitable mental time lag between when truly philosophy-shredding events occur and when humanity correctly assesses their meaning.
During that time lag, modernity-besotted scholars can celebrate Vannevar Bush for both developing a differential analyser (basically an aiming device designed to accurately drop a shell or bomb down a pickle barrel inside a distant military plant) and for leading the development of the atomic bomb - which could miss the infamous pickle barrel by miles and still destroy the plant (and the entire city surrounding it as well).
Ouch ! What ever else these academics think they might be doing - being rationally consistent certainly isn't one of them.
Bush and the American Air Force strategic bomber proponents had claimed - for years before, during and after WWII - that the war could be quickly and humanely won by highly accurate precision bombing.
Slow but steady infantry fighting, like slow but steady democracy, they felt was simply not up for defeating absolute evils like Hitler and Tojo.
Superheroes with superweapons were needed to impose extralegal violence , all to quickly restore justice and peace.
Indeed, the American Air Force's single bomb on Nagasaki did 'quickly' end the war --- albeit six years after it began .
But Nagasaki's target aiming results could hardly be called accurate --- despite conditions being virtually ideal to demonstrate precise bombing --- if it actually existed anywhere outside its supporters' minds.
Similarly , throughout WWII Vannevar Bush thought natural penicillin was totally unfit for use as a medicine.
He pushed instead for penicillin to first become a man-made chemical synthetic before seeking wide public use, thereby delaying its mass introduction for precious years during an all-out Total War.
What he actually accepted credit for however, at war's end , was the unlikely triumph of natural penicillin.
Modernity's 1945 big triumphs, in other words, when more closely examined were actually modernity's biggest failures -- triumphs instead for postmodernity.
Hence my journal's focus on wartime Gotham and its doubly twin Manhattan Projects.
On one side of wartime Gotham's Janus face , modernity's failures to precisely craft the Carl Norden bombsight and Merck synthetic penicillin .
On the other side, postmodernity : Columbia University's 'close is good enough' Atomic bomb (and the Grumman close-in fighter-bomber) together with Pfizer/Dawson's slime-produced natural penicillin.
I think the subject matter for my journal is both a dramatic page-turner story for people who enjoy exciting narrative nonfiction - and a good time and place to look to discover when, how and why modernity failed and postmodernity climbed out of the wreckage.
Because modernity failed but didn't die - it lives on inside the minds of our climate deniers inhabiting almost all the places of power and wealth.
And unless we can make them see that their gods have failed , the future global debacle they have planned for all of us will make WWII look pretty petty ante ...
It would be as if Matter and Anti-Matter went through a revolving door together and yet both emerged equally triumphant.
At the time ( just after September 1945) most militarily-oriented accounts of the end of WWII certainly played the Allied victory as a win-win result for the forces of Modernity against a threatened return to a barbaric dark age --- and many military-oriented accounts of WWII still spin it that way.
'Modern Big Science (here insert radar, jets, atomic bomb and penicillin perhaps) beats back masses of fiercely barbaric atavists'.
But some prescient scholars , even in 1945 , people more attuned to changes in fashions in philosophy and to changes in deep broad cultural life certainly saw that that Dresden, Hiroshima, Auschwitz , the Katyn Forest and the Fall of Singapore had opened up breaches in the old certitudes that time and sunshine couldn't heal.
So seventy years later we can still have dozens and dozens of new books every year focussed on the meaning of the events of 1945 emerging (as it were) from two separate but parallel universes.
1945 is laid out in these parallel but widely separated streams of books as either the birth of modern Big Science and a triumph for modern progressive rational planning ---- or as the beginning of the end of the 400 year old Enlightenment Project.
First, let me make it clear that all those who saw 1945 as a triumph for Enlightenment and Modernity were sincere - and those who still hold these views are equally sincere.
But being sincere and being correct are not the same.
I see this being the result of an inevitable mental time lag between when truly philosophy-shredding events occur and when humanity correctly assesses their meaning.
During that time lag, modernity-besotted scholars can celebrate Vannevar Bush for both developing a differential analyser (basically an aiming device designed to accurately drop a shell or bomb down a pickle barrel inside a distant military plant) and for leading the development of the atomic bomb - which could miss the infamous pickle barrel by miles and still destroy the plant (and the entire city surrounding it as well).
Ouch ! What ever else these academics think they might be doing - being rationally consistent certainly isn't one of them.
Slow but steady infantry fighting, like slow but steady democracy, they felt was simply not up for defeating absolute evils like Hitler and Tojo.
Superheroes with superweapons were needed to impose extralegal violence , all to quickly restore justice and peace.
Indeed, the American Air Force's single bomb on Nagasaki did 'quickly' end the war --- albeit six years after it began .
But Nagasaki's target aiming results could hardly be called accurate --- despite conditions being virtually ideal to demonstrate precise bombing --- if it actually existed anywhere outside its supporters' minds.
Similarly , throughout WWII Vannevar Bush thought natural penicillin was totally unfit for use as a medicine.
He pushed instead for penicillin to first become a man-made chemical synthetic before seeking wide public use, thereby delaying its mass introduction for precious years during an all-out Total War.
What he actually accepted credit for however, at war's end , was the unlikely triumph of natural penicillin.
Modernity's 1945 big triumphs, in other words, when more closely examined were actually modernity's biggest failures -- triumphs instead for postmodernity.
Hence my journal's focus on wartime Gotham and its doubly twin Manhattan Projects.
On one side of wartime Gotham's Janus face , modernity's failures to precisely craft the Carl Norden bombsight and Merck synthetic penicillin .
On the other side, postmodernity : Columbia University's 'close is good enough' Atomic bomb (and the Grumman close-in fighter-bomber) together with Pfizer/Dawson's slime-produced natural penicillin.
I think the subject matter for my journal is both a dramatic page-turner story for people who enjoy exciting narrative nonfiction - and a good time and place to look to discover when, how and why modernity failed and postmodernity climbed out of the wreckage.
Because modernity failed but didn't die - it lives on inside the minds of our climate deniers inhabiting almost all the places of power and wealth.
And unless we can make them see that their gods have failed , the future global debacle they have planned for all of us will make WWII look pretty petty ante ...
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Real life 1940s comic book 'superhero' : Jewish nebbish Robert Oppenheimer and his plan to 'do good' with secret atomic powers
Move over Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and let a real 1940s Jewish nebbish take the Superman wheel !
Gotham City-born Robert Oppenheimer secretly cloaked a bloodthirsty propensity to inflict supreme violence 'to do good' behind a rather mousy public exterior.
But his words at the top level meetings that determined when and where the first A-bombs were to be dropped reveal a man fully in grip of the traditional American monomyth of redemptive violence 'to do good' (pace John Sheldon Lawrence & Robert Jewett) via a war-ending superweapon (pace H Bruce Franklin).
Lawrence, Jewett and Franklin repeatedly document that these myths gripped both factual and fictional America , both Americas feeding off each other.
It is easy to caricature right wing Republican-leaning Leslie Groves and Vannevar Bush as war-mongers , intent only on 'doing bad'.
Much less easy than trying to account for left-leaning Oppenheimer's propensity to kill hundreds of thousands of women and children to 'do good'.
The case of Oppenheimer forces us to confront the power of these enduring American shibboleths (the monomyth of justified extra-legal violence to 'do good' and America's right to the unique possession of a secret war-ending superweapon) in the mainstream of ordinary American thought ....
Gotham City-born Robert Oppenheimer secretly cloaked a bloodthirsty propensity to inflict supreme violence 'to do good' behind a rather mousy public exterior.
But his words at the top level meetings that determined when and where the first A-bombs were to be dropped reveal a man fully in grip of the traditional American monomyth of redemptive violence 'to do good' (pace John Sheldon Lawrence & Robert Jewett) via a war-ending superweapon (pace H Bruce Franklin).
Lawrence, Jewett and Franklin repeatedly document that these myths gripped both factual and fictional America , both Americas feeding off each other.
It is easy to caricature right wing Republican-leaning Leslie Groves and Vannevar Bush as war-mongers , intent only on 'doing bad'.
Much less easy than trying to account for left-leaning Oppenheimer's propensity to kill hundreds of thousands of women and children to 'do good'.
The case of Oppenheimer forces us to confront the power of these enduring American shibboleths (the monomyth of justified extra-legal violence to 'do good' and America's right to the unique possession of a secret war-ending superweapon) in the mainstream of ordinary American thought ....
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Penicillin meeting is just the cover story for atomic bomb meeting
On December 17 1941, the medical wing of America's famous OSRD war research agency held a rare - possibly unique - meeting outside the Washington beltway.
Even rarer was the presence of one attendee, the boss of the OSRD himself, Vannevar Bush, never one to think war would be won by advances in medicine.
What on earth was really going on ?
Supposedly the meeting was held in New York city's highly exclusive University Club to please the CEOs of America's drug companies - but to do that , Chicago would have been a more central choice.
The head of the medical wing, Merck chief scientific consultant A N Richards , had really brought his committee to New York City solely as a favour to Bush.
Bush needed a suitable cover story for a series of meetings on something he felt far more important than Henry Dawson's little Manhattan based natural penicillin project.
Bush was finalizing a plan to ask FDR to approve a wartime atomic bomb as the top Allied war project : the atomic Manhattan Project.
So far most of America's atomic bomb research had happened at the same university where Dawson was doing his penicillin work : Columbia.
Its dean of science George Pegram and its Nobel winning physical chemist Harold Urey had just returned from a special fact finding mission to check out Britain's atomic efforts.
On their return their letter to Bush had made it clear the British plans were well advanced and that America needed to get on board or be left behind in strategic strength.
Bush was there in NYC to hear this confirmed in detail by Pegram - a man he trusted completely to be 'sound' .
Bush had to be sure , before he gave the red light to this hugely expensive project that would suck scarce resources from other (possibly war-winning) new weapons.
Bush gave so much money to Columbia for its atomic Manhattan Project work during the war - money that the entire university badly needed - that Columbia was completely willing to throw Dawson's penicillin Manhattan Project 'under the bus' when Dawson's efforts roused Bush and Richards' ire.
For in Manhattan , the twin projects Bomb/ death and penicillin/life intertwine constantly....
Even rarer was the presence of one attendee, the boss of the OSRD himself, Vannevar Bush, never one to think war would be won by advances in medicine.
What on earth was really going on ?
Manhattan's twin wartime projects collide
Supposedly the meeting was held in New York city's highly exclusive University Club to please the CEOs of America's drug companies - but to do that , Chicago would have been a more central choice.
The head of the medical wing, Merck chief scientific consultant A N Richards , had really brought his committee to New York City solely as a favour to Bush.
Bush needed a suitable cover story for a series of meetings on something he felt far more important than Henry Dawson's little Manhattan based natural penicillin project.
Bush was finalizing a plan to ask FDR to approve a wartime atomic bomb as the top Allied war project : the atomic Manhattan Project.
So far most of America's atomic bomb research had happened at the same university where Dawson was doing his penicillin work : Columbia.
Its dean of science George Pegram and its Nobel winning physical chemist Harold Urey had just returned from a special fact finding mission to check out Britain's atomic efforts.
On their return their letter to Bush had made it clear the British plans were well advanced and that America needed to get on board or be left behind in strategic strength.
Bush was there in NYC to hear this confirmed in detail by Pegram - a man he trusted completely to be 'sound' .
Bush had to be sure , before he gave the red light to this hugely expensive project that would suck scarce resources from other (possibly war-winning) new weapons.
Bush gave so much money to Columbia for its atomic Manhattan Project work during the war - money that the entire university badly needed - that Columbia was completely willing to throw Dawson's penicillin Manhattan Project 'under the bus' when Dawson's efforts roused Bush and Richards' ire.
For in Manhattan , the twin projects Bomb/ death and penicillin/life intertwine constantly....
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Manhattan Natural : wartime Gotham's un-super heroes ...
At a time (WWII) when comic book superheroes , usually operating in a make-believe Manhattan, were saving the world every day and enthralling North American children and youth , lesser known but equally larger-than-life actual heroics were taking place in a real Manhattan.
But these valiants bringing natural penicillin lifesaving to the world against government blowback were hardly Superman or indeed any sort of superheroes .
If by the term 'superhero' we mean someone strong in body as well as mind.
They were un-super heroes if ever than phrase had meaning.
They were more like a badly aged Clark Kent , still mild and meek but now weak and crippled .
They never numbered more than a handful : misfits , unfits and just plain rebels.
They were aptly described by the official historian of their arch enemy , Vannevar Bush's OSRD , as "4Fs, women and the Grace of God".
Henry and Marjorie Dawson, Floyd Odlum, Dante Colitti, Thomas Hunter, Charlie and Miss H --- they hardly had more than a handful of really good limbs between the seven of them.
'Unfits' the whole lot of them - the very 4Fs of the 4Fs - yet real life heroes despite all that .
Perhaps we could still make use of their story - as a sort of role model - by making a series of comic books or graphic novels about their wartime exploits ...
But these valiants bringing natural penicillin lifesaving to the world against government blowback were hardly Superman or indeed any sort of superheroes .
If by the term 'superhero' we mean someone strong in body as well as mind.
They were un-super heroes if ever than phrase had meaning.
They were more like a badly aged Clark Kent , still mild and meek but now weak and crippled .
They never numbered more than a handful : misfits , unfits and just plain rebels.
They were aptly described by the official historian of their arch enemy , Vannevar Bush's OSRD , as "4Fs, women and the Grace of God".
Henry and Marjorie Dawson, Floyd Odlum, Dante Colitti, Thomas Hunter, Charlie and Miss H --- they hardly had more than a handful of really good limbs between the seven of them.
'Unfits' the whole lot of them - the very 4Fs of the 4Fs - yet real life heroes despite all that .
Perhaps we could still make use of their story - as a sort of role model - by making a series of comic books or graphic novels about their wartime exploits ...
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Abundant Penicillin by 1942 - only if Howard Florey didn't come to America ?
When ,in April 1941, Howard Florey learned that his best shot at world acclaim (as the only begetter of systemic penicillin) was at risk because Henry Dawson had got there first, the old claim jumper boot scooted over to America to shake a little dust.
Unfortunately, while in America he met and bonded with an old friend, A Newton Richards, the chief medical advisor (sans MD degree !) to both Merck and the US government's war science research arm , Vannevar Bush's OSRD.
Together the pair agreed that most of the wartime penicillin effort should go into first synthesizing it - rather than merely scaling up existing natural penicillin fermentation technology and getting penicillin to the military and civilian patients dying for lack of it - now.
Richards (who never met a conflict of interest he didn't like) was mindful that Merck's cross harbour rival, Pfizer, was likely to be the big winner if natural fermentation - and not Merck's strength artificial synthesis - was used to produce this priceless new drug.
Left alone, Pfizer (with Henry Dawson's team assisting) was already on the way, during that Fall in 1941 , to producing enough penicillin to get the show on the road.
A pity then that Florey had to spoil the show ...
Unfortunately, while in America he met and bonded with an old friend, A Newton Richards, the chief medical advisor (sans MD degree !) to both Merck and the US government's war science research arm , Vannevar Bush's OSRD.
Together the pair agreed that most of the wartime penicillin effort should go into first synthesizing it - rather than merely scaling up existing natural penicillin fermentation technology and getting penicillin to the military and civilian patients dying for lack of it - now.
Richards (who never met a conflict of interest he didn't like) was mindful that Merck's cross harbour rival, Pfizer, was likely to be the big winner if natural fermentation - and not Merck's strength artificial synthesis - was used to produce this priceless new drug.
Left alone, Pfizer (with Henry Dawson's team assisting) was already on the way, during that Fall in 1941 , to producing enough penicillin to get the show on the road.
A pity then that Florey had to spoil the show ...
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Wartime Penicillin Drama : 3 non-chemists promote chemical penicillin while 3 working chemists promote natural penicillin ...
Three middle-aged chemist manques who disgracefully put youthful dreams before the public good - at the height of a total war
Three of wartime penicillin's chief protagonists were men who, as youths, had hoped to become hands-on lab research chemists but whom necessity had pushed them instead into becoming medical science desk administrators.
Their names ?
Howard Florey, director of Oxford University's Dunn Path Institute , A. Newton Richards, head of the Medical Division of Vannevar Bush's famous OSRD war-science agency and George W. Merck , head of Merck.
All three greatly respected each other and worked as closely together as the American and British governments (nominally allies) allowed.
Wartime penicillin gave all three a second childhood as chemist manques and disgracefully, they ran with it* .
Even as a world at war panted instead for lots of disease-fighting drugs in any form , as long as they worked , were safe and were available NOW .
"Middle Aged Crazy"
For ten useless years (before , during and after WWII) they placed their highest priority on producing totally synthesized artificial (patentable) commercially viable penicillin.
They didn't get it and we still haven't.
If we had left penicillin just to them - as most at the top of the American and British governments had wanted - we'd never seen any amount of penicillin . Not during the war and not for long after, until newly elected governments came to their senses , cut their losses and moved on.
Let us now honour the three chemists who put public good before their chosen profession
The best solution perhaps for all time but certainly during a war emergency with its shortages of time and resources.
Let us now honour their names - as true patriots , as people who put the good of humanity before gaining more fame for their chosen profession.
These largely unknown and unhonoured heroes of the wartime penicillin saga made sure we had penicillin when it was most needed - D-Day and after.
And these three laid the groundwork for the kind of micro-biology technology that still produces all our antibiotics and many other medicines as well.
They are the American WPB's (War Production Board) Larry Elder , Glaxo chief Harry Jephcott and Pfizer chief John L Smith.
While we can show our disappointment for what Alexander Fleming, Florey , Martin Henry Dawson and all their co-workers did or didn't do with penicillin , it is my contention that all their actions were predictable , based on my through study of their personalities as displayed from youth on into middle age.
But I can't honestly say the same about Elder, Jephcott and Smith : they were the true wildcards of the whole wartime penicillin drama....
* I am mindful of former Nova Scotia premier John Buchanan who became a lawyer and a very very successful politician but who had really wanted to be a civil engineer.
Once in power, he drove the province into tremendous debt building anything and everything in sight : the once young engineer manque who finally got to 'drive the excavator'.
Most middle aged men - once they get money, a pot belly and grey hair - content themselves with finally buying the Corvette or Harley Davidson that Dad would never let them buy - but some (like Florey , Richards and Merck) do far more harm than that when they get a chance to go "middle aged crazy" .
Monday, July 28, 2014
Oxford University Artificial Penicillin totally fails to deliver - morally as well as technically
It goes without saying that Oxford University's wartime chimera of totally synthesized artificial penicillin was an abject failure.
75 years on, we still start the production of all the penicillin and beta lactam antibiotics with natural fermentation.
So ---- just a minor technical failing ?
Few go on to consider the moral failings behind the Conservative Party-led British government's wartime penicillin decisions.
The (New Deal-oriented) American WPB (War Production Board) had greatly upped the penicillin amounts originally proposed by Oxford's American ally , Vannevar Bush's OSRD.
The WPB wanted not just enough penicillin produced to satisfy the life-saving demands of the American military, with some left for certain civilian conditions.
They wanted levels that meant all American lifesaving situations were met.
With plenty left over to fill all the unmet demands among the other Allies, with still more left for neutral nations, liberated Europe and even Axis POWs.
The WPB fulfilled Dr Martin Henry Dawson's dream of cheap abundant penicillin for all in the war world - in spades !
By contrast, Churchill's government was unwilling to divert enough resources away from yet more heavy bombers to cure all of Britain's military and civilian life-threatening bacterial infections - let alone to meet the needs of its own colonies.
And as for the rest of the world ? The could all whistle for their penicillin , as far as Churchill was concerned.
The prime minister of the nation that had given the world the discovery and early development of the world's first and best lifesaver thus threw all that global goodwill away - just for a handful of more bombs.
With that one - unbelievably heartless and stupid - decision , Churchill ensured that the Pax Britannica became the Pax Americana .....
75 years on, we still start the production of all the penicillin and beta lactam antibiotics with natural fermentation.
So ---- just a minor technical failing ?
Few go on to consider the moral failings behind the Conservative Party-led British government's wartime penicillin decisions.
The (New Deal-oriented) American WPB (War Production Board) had greatly upped the penicillin amounts originally proposed by Oxford's American ally , Vannevar Bush's OSRD.
The WPB wanted not just enough penicillin produced to satisfy the life-saving demands of the American military, with some left for certain civilian conditions.
They wanted levels that meant all American lifesaving situations were met.
With plenty left over to fill all the unmet demands among the other Allies, with still more left for neutral nations, liberated Europe and even Axis POWs.
The WPB fulfilled Dr Martin Henry Dawson's dream of cheap abundant penicillin for all in the war world - in spades !
By contrast, Churchill's government was unwilling to divert enough resources away from yet more heavy bombers to cure all of Britain's military and civilian life-threatening bacterial infections - let alone to meet the needs of its own colonies.
And as for the rest of the world ? The could all whistle for their penicillin , as far as Churchill was concerned.
The prime minister of the nation that had given the world the discovery and early development of the world's first and best lifesaver thus threw all that global goodwill away - just for a handful of more bombs.
With that one - unbelievably heartless and stupid - decision , Churchill ensured that the Pax Britannica became the Pax Americana .....
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Oxford Artificial versus Manhattan Natural
Howard Florey (along with Alexander Fleming and Winston Churchill's government) spend ten years before during and after WWII pursuing the chimera of totally artificial (patentable) penicillin --- to no avail.
As did Florey's supporters in America - Merck, Squibb and Vannevar Bush's all-powerful OSRD.
Set against then, on the opposite side of the Hudson River , was Dr Martin Henry Dawson and John l Smith , chemist and boss of Pfizer.
They saw possibilities in the fermentation of the (public domain - free for all to grow) natural penicillium to produce antibiotics.
This was despite its current yields being admittedly low: they felt as it was a totally new way of doing medicine , it might well improve drastically with more practise.
(I should mention that two other strong skeptics of the whole idea of the commercial viability of total synthesis of penicillin were also practising chemists : Glaxo boss Harry Jepcott and the WPB's penicillin czar Larry Elder.
It was chemist manques like Florey and the OSRD's Dr Richards who were the most likely to feel that of course man-made Chemistry was always bound to be superior to Mother Nature.)
Today of course, with penicillin being produced at 50,000 times the levels of Fleming for the same cost in time labour and materials, the case against oxford Artificial seems clear - but it wasn't so throughout the war and beyond.
Long Island scientist Miloslav Demerec deserves a lot more credit than he ever gets (which is none !) for his major role in making our wonderful world of relatively cheap abundant antibiotics ....
As did Florey's supporters in America - Merck, Squibb and Vannevar Bush's all-powerful OSRD.
Set against then, on the opposite side of the Hudson River , was Dr Martin Henry Dawson and John l Smith , chemist and boss of Pfizer.
They saw possibilities in the fermentation of the (public domain - free for all to grow) natural penicillium to produce antibiotics.
This was despite its current yields being admittedly low: they felt as it was a totally new way of doing medicine , it might well improve drastically with more practise.
(I should mention that two other strong skeptics of the whole idea of the commercial viability of total synthesis of penicillin were also practising chemists : Glaxo boss Harry Jepcott and the WPB's penicillin czar Larry Elder.
It was chemist manques like Florey and the OSRD's Dr Richards who were the most likely to feel that of course man-made Chemistry was always bound to be superior to Mother Nature.)
Today of course, with penicillin being produced at 50,000 times the levels of Fleming for the same cost in time labour and materials, the case against oxford Artificial seems clear - but it wasn't so throughout the war and beyond.
Long Island scientist Miloslav Demerec deserves a lot more credit than he ever gets (which is none !) for his major role in making our wonderful world of relatively cheap abundant antibiotics ....
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Penicillin's "Bengali Famine Years" : 1943-1944
It was not America and Britain, it was not even the British and American governments ,that made the momentous decision, between late 1942 and early 1943, not to divert tax money just a little away from bombs and towards penicillin production instead.
This decision led, over the period of 1943-1944, to a Bengali Famine-like situation among the Allies over shortages of live-saving drugs for civilians.
It was only one government agency in each country that made that decision ; albeit all-powerful agencies in the middle of a war.
But I do not believe they acted contrary to the informally expressed sentiments of their country's war cabinets.
Let the record note their names : Vannevar Bush's weapon-developing agency known as the OSRD in America and the Ministry of (Army) Supply (MoS) in Britain, with the common link urging them into this course being Sir Howard Florey.
By contrast, diverting even a tiny tiny amount of the government's war resources to the issuing of firm standing orders for penicillin purchases could have provided adequate semi-purified natural penicillin to treat all cases (civilian and military) of patients dying from blood poisoning that were resistant to the only life-saving alternative, the sulpha drugs.
Let me make it perfectly, morally, clear : the fundamental issue was not that penicillin was in short supply : it was that any method of saving those dying of sulpha-resistant blood poisoning was in desperately short supply.
These diverted resources , expressed as firm government orders for penicillin at currently profitably prices ,would have stimulated private capital to make good use of current technology and of idle rural factories that had closed because of the war , as well as unskilled rural labour also left idle because of the war.
As models that this could have and in fact did work in practise, one only needs, in the case of Britain, to point to Glaxo's first low tech but efficient penicillin factories cobbled out of bits of unused space in other people's factories.
And in the American case, to point to an enterprising rural mushroom farmer called Raymond Rettew who briefly became the world's biggest penicillin producer, in the late spring of 1943.
FDR's party did not lose the 1944 election over this issue , because another part of his American government (the WPB, War Production Board) chose to totally reversed this decision, and in spades.
But Churchill's party did ultimately pay the full price for this decision made by the MoS (led by his fellow Tory, Sir Andrew Duncan) not to push for enough penicillin production resources to help civilian as well as soldier, later in the war.
That was when his party overwhelmingly lost the general election it was supposed to romp home in, July 2nd 1945 .
Churchill's equally callous decision not to stop the wartime Bengali Famine in which four million people died ( "If there really is a famine, why hasn't Gandhi died?" he sneered) probably also sealed the chances of Churchill's Britain holding onto the Indian Empire.
If Florey had been even moderately left wing rather than very right wing, he might have gone to other more left wing oriented agencies of the British and American governments and the wartime penicillin story could have been very different .
If the wartime history of Civil War Era America was written as historians write the Pollyanna story of wartime penicillin, there would be only one America and one government ,with no sense at all of conflict between different parts of America.
My work on wartime penicillin will make it very clear that two agencies of the American government, the OSRD and the WPB were not in agreement on penicillin production levels and methods but in conflict.
Just as in the UK, Howard Florey/MoS and Harry Jephcott/Glaxo were not in agreement on these same issues but in conflict.
And I will make it clear that there were no technical reasons why civilians could not have penicillin in 1943-1944 , rather it was the result of a political and moral decision not to produce one less bomber squadron if that was the cost of bring penicillin to dying civilians.
For these were penicillin famines by government fiat : Bengal-on-the-Potomac and Bengal-on-the-Thames.....
This decision led, over the period of 1943-1944, to a Bengali Famine-like situation among the Allies over shortages of live-saving drugs for civilians.
It was only one government agency in each country that made that decision ; albeit all-powerful agencies in the middle of a war.
But I do not believe they acted contrary to the informally expressed sentiments of their country's war cabinets.
Let the record note their names : Vannevar Bush's weapon-developing agency known as the OSRD in America and the Ministry of (Army) Supply (MoS) in Britain, with the common link urging them into this course being Sir Howard Florey.
By contrast, diverting even a tiny tiny amount of the government's war resources to the issuing of firm standing orders for penicillin purchases could have provided adequate semi-purified natural penicillin to treat all cases (civilian and military) of patients dying from blood poisoning that were resistant to the only life-saving alternative, the sulpha drugs.
Let me make it perfectly, morally, clear : the fundamental issue was not that penicillin was in short supply : it was that any method of saving those dying of sulpha-resistant blood poisoning was in desperately short supply.
These diverted resources , expressed as firm government orders for penicillin at currently profitably prices ,would have stimulated private capital to make good use of current technology and of idle rural factories that had closed because of the war , as well as unskilled rural labour also left idle because of the war.
As models that this could have and in fact did work in practise, one only needs, in the case of Britain, to point to Glaxo's first low tech but efficient penicillin factories cobbled out of bits of unused space in other people's factories.
And in the American case, to point to an enterprising rural mushroom farmer called Raymond Rettew who briefly became the world's biggest penicillin producer, in the late spring of 1943.
FDR's party did not lose the 1944 election over this issue , because another part of his American government (the WPB, War Production Board) chose to totally reversed this decision, and in spades.
But Churchill's party did ultimately pay the full price for this decision made by the MoS (led by his fellow Tory, Sir Andrew Duncan) not to push for enough penicillin production resources to help civilian as well as soldier, later in the war.
That was when his party overwhelmingly lost the general election it was supposed to romp home in, July 2nd 1945 .
Churchill's equally callous decision not to stop the wartime Bengali Famine in which four million people died ( "If there really is a famine, why hasn't Gandhi died?" he sneered) probably also sealed the chances of Churchill's Britain holding onto the Indian Empire.
If Florey had been even moderately left wing rather than very right wing, he might have gone to other more left wing oriented agencies of the British and American governments and the wartime penicillin story could have been very different .
If the wartime history of Civil War Era America was written as historians write the Pollyanna story of wartime penicillin, there would be only one America and one government ,with no sense at all of conflict between different parts of America.
My work on wartime penicillin will make it very clear that two agencies of the American government, the OSRD and the WPB were not in agreement on penicillin production levels and methods but in conflict.
Just as in the UK, Howard Florey/MoS and Harry Jephcott/Glaxo were not in agreement on these same issues but in conflict.
And I will make it clear that there were no technical reasons why civilians could not have penicillin in 1943-1944 , rather it was the result of a political and moral decision not to produce one less bomber squadron if that was the cost of bring penicillin to dying civilians.
For these were penicillin famines by government fiat : Bengal-on-the-Potomac and Bengal-on-the-Thames.....
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The first - and internally fatal - Tory response to the Beveridge Report : the Ministry of Supply takes over Penicillin ...
To make sense of this claim, we need to clear as to what the role of Britain's powerful wartime Ministry of Supply actually was.
The Ministry of Supply (the MoS) was never the British equivalent of the American War Production Board (WPB), no matter how many times this claim is offered up.
In fact, it was very much closer in spirit to Vannevar Bush's powerful Office of Scientific Research and Development (the OSRD) per the role set out for both under statute , than it was to the statutory role set out for the WPB.
Britain's Ministry of Supply strived to supply the military's needs - period. Unlike the WPB, it did not try to arbitrate between the conflicting demands of civilian and military claims upon scarce material and manpower.
Equally, the OSRD did NOT deal with all of America's wartime science and research efforts , a point that no doubt Jesus Christ himself will have to repeat again and again to academics on Judgement Day and on into all Eternity.
It only dealt with that amount of science and research that involved the designing of (but not the production of) new weapons that could come into use, during the current war.
Bush was very very careful to sharply limit the parameters of his organization, all to make it more dominant within its narrow but vital sphere.
So when Howard Florey went to both the OSRD and to the Ministry of Supply to help in the production of penicillin - rather than going instead to ask help from the American Public Health Service and the British Ministry of Health, he had already made it very clear where his penicillin priority lay.
He wanted additional penicillin production yes --- but only sufficient to supply the armed forces, period.
Florey was strongly conservative, as were all the key individuals within the Minister of Supply and the OSRD : Big Government to them was abhorrent.
Thus the sudden willingness, eagerness even, of the Ministry of Supply in the Fall of 1942 to go all out and seize control of all of the British commercial penicillin production has to be seen as ideologically surprising.
Unless it can (and should) be seen as the opening conservative counter-attack against the rumoured radical notions of the Beveridge Report.
A preemptive move to ensure that the Ministry of Health (also run by a Tory minister but with wider than just military responsibilities) didn't dominate penicillin production.
If is often claimed that the Ministry of Supply took over all of penicillin production because the Scottish-born minister was an old pal of fellow Scot, Alec Fleming, who asked him to do so.
Politicians - grant us at least this - do not spontaneously fall upon old friends and their requests with open arms --- not unless it suits us.
In September and October 1942, Fleming's request much suited Duncan and the British Tories.
In late September and October 1942, the tenor of the Beveridge report, though as yet unreleased, was well known within the top officials of Whitehall.
It called for a placing the values of equality and egalitarianism at the core of the British government - a notion intensely hostile to Tory values.
For penicillin, all this Beveridge "equality" talk could only mean one of two things.
It might mean divvying inadequate amounts of penicillin equally between dying civilians and dying soldiers - when Tories felt the most vital hope of penicillin was that it would help maintain current front line troop levels without the need to "call up" middle class men (their voters) now at home engaged in war work.
Or it might mean diverting the cost of one additional Lancaster squadron (three million pounds) away from the all-out bombing of civilian Germany , towards creating more penicillin factories on the successful Glaxo model.
Glaxo had taken up space in bits of idle factories and by using local cheap and plentiful unskilled labour,( aka women) , had cheaply but efficiently produced a lot of penicillin with current low technology methods and equipment.
(Basically making penicillin as if it was a milk product , using the very abundant modern dairy equipment existing everywhere thanks to the 1920s civilized world's mania over pure milk.)
A lot of similar factories could be quickly brought up to speed, supplying a good deal of penicillin, without requiring too much vital material like stainless steel, already in desperately short supply.
If all this sounds very familiar, that is because this solution is what Britain in the end was forced to do - but very late and only under intense public pressure.
If it had been done wholeheartedly in the Fall of 1942, there would have been no highly public late 1944 civilian penicillin famine crisis.
But the Conservative bits and bob of the Coalition Government wanted no part of equality and penicillin was just the first of many counterattacks against the threat of Beveridge.
They were unsuccessful in the extreme, blowing what had to seem to them (and to Labour !), a sure electoral victory at war's end.
"Unfair distribution of a vital commodity in short supply" , to quote The Times (of all people !) referencing an earlier debate over Hugh Dalton's fuel rationing proposals , was totally anathema to the British public.
In June 1945, what little polling type information we have suggests it was the unfair rationing of medical services that moved people to Labour .
The most current example of that unfair medical rationing had to be rationing difficulties with life saving penicillin.
Let me repeat that : "life saving". This was not just temporary unfairness in allocating housing or clothing : this was the unfair allocation of life itself.
You can't get a more "vital commodity" than life itself : to switch from the specialized language of the economist to that of the political scientist trying to account for a surprise pattern of vote changing, "life" is a very salient issue.
If so, the unexpected and total defeat of Churchill's Tories in June 1945 can be seen as having its origins in the Fall of 1942, when the Ministry of Supply (and Howard Florey) successfully re-defined the shortage of penicillin (contra Beveridge), as a shortage of military penicillin, civilians be damned.....
The Ministry of Supply (the MoS) was never the British equivalent of the American War Production Board (WPB), no matter how many times this claim is offered up.
In fact, it was very much closer in spirit to Vannevar Bush's powerful Office of Scientific Research and Development (the OSRD) per the role set out for both under statute , than it was to the statutory role set out for the WPB.
Britain's Ministry of Supply strived to supply the military's needs - period. Unlike the WPB, it did not try to arbitrate between the conflicting demands of civilian and military claims upon scarce material and manpower.
Equally, the OSRD did NOT deal with all of America's wartime science and research efforts , a point that no doubt Jesus Christ himself will have to repeat again and again to academics on Judgement Day and on into all Eternity.
It only dealt with that amount of science and research that involved the designing of (but not the production of) new weapons that could come into use, during the current war.
Bush was very very careful to sharply limit the parameters of his organization, all to make it more dominant within its narrow but vital sphere.
So when Howard Florey went to both the OSRD and to the Ministry of Supply to help in the production of penicillin - rather than going instead to ask help from the American Public Health Service and the British Ministry of Health, he had already made it very clear where his penicillin priority lay.
He wanted additional penicillin production yes --- but only sufficient to supply the armed forces, period.
Florey was strongly conservative, as were all the key individuals within the Minister of Supply and the OSRD : Big Government to them was abhorrent.
Thus the sudden willingness, eagerness even, of the Ministry of Supply in the Fall of 1942 to go all out and seize control of all of the British commercial penicillin production has to be seen as ideologically surprising.
Unless it can (and should) be seen as the opening conservative counter-attack against the rumoured radical notions of the Beveridge Report.
A preemptive move to ensure that the Ministry of Health (also run by a Tory minister but with wider than just military responsibilities) didn't dominate penicillin production.
If is often claimed that the Ministry of Supply took over all of penicillin production because the Scottish-born minister was an old pal of fellow Scot, Alec Fleming, who asked him to do so.
Politicians - grant us at least this - do not spontaneously fall upon old friends and their requests with open arms --- not unless it suits us.
In September and October 1942, Fleming's request much suited Duncan and the British Tories.
In late September and October 1942, the tenor of the Beveridge report, though as yet unreleased, was well known within the top officials of Whitehall.
It called for a placing the values of equality and egalitarianism at the core of the British government - a notion intensely hostile to Tory values.
For penicillin, all this Beveridge "equality" talk could only mean one of two things.
It might mean divvying inadequate amounts of penicillin equally between dying civilians and dying soldiers - when Tories felt the most vital hope of penicillin was that it would help maintain current front line troop levels without the need to "call up" middle class men (their voters) now at home engaged in war work.
Or it might mean diverting the cost of one additional Lancaster squadron (three million pounds) away from the all-out bombing of civilian Germany , towards creating more penicillin factories on the successful Glaxo model.
Glaxo had taken up space in bits of idle factories and by using local cheap and plentiful unskilled labour,( aka women) , had cheaply but efficiently produced a lot of penicillin with current low technology methods and equipment.
(Basically making penicillin as if it was a milk product , using the very abundant modern dairy equipment existing everywhere thanks to the 1920s civilized world's mania over pure milk.)
A lot of similar factories could be quickly brought up to speed, supplying a good deal of penicillin, without requiring too much vital material like stainless steel, already in desperately short supply.
If all this sounds very familiar, that is because this solution is what Britain in the end was forced to do - but very late and only under intense public pressure.
If it had been done wholeheartedly in the Fall of 1942, there would have been no highly public late 1944 civilian penicillin famine crisis.
But the Conservative bits and bob of the Coalition Government wanted no part of equality and penicillin was just the first of many counterattacks against the threat of Beveridge.
They were unsuccessful in the extreme, blowing what had to seem to them (and to Labour !), a sure electoral victory at war's end.
"Unfair distribution of a vital commodity in short supply" , to quote The Times (of all people !) referencing an earlier debate over Hugh Dalton's fuel rationing proposals , was totally anathema to the British public.
In June 1945, what little polling type information we have suggests it was the unfair rationing of medical services that moved people to Labour .
The most current example of that unfair medical rationing had to be rationing difficulties with life saving penicillin.
Let me repeat that : "life saving". This was not just temporary unfairness in allocating housing or clothing : this was the unfair allocation of life itself.
You can't get a more "vital commodity" than life itself : to switch from the specialized language of the economist to that of the political scientist trying to account for a surprise pattern of vote changing, "life" is a very salient issue.
If so, the unexpected and total defeat of Churchill's Tories in June 1945 can be seen as having its origins in the Fall of 1942, when the Ministry of Supply (and Howard Florey) successfully re-defined the shortage of penicillin (contra Beveridge), as a shortage of military penicillin, civilians be damned.....
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Howard Florey saw potential enemies everywhere, but with "friends" like A N Richards and Robert Coghill, he hardly need bother looking any further
Howard Florey's correspondence twice notes that he has just received a higher yielding strain of penicillium from America.
The first, in November 1941 ,was obtained from Dr Rake at Squibb - a higher producing mutant from Fleming's original strain.
The second time in November 1943, some un-named strains were obtained from Robert Coghill of the NRRL , while he was visiting Oxford .
But in the two crucial years in between ?
I see bugger all evidence that Florey got the latest improvements in penicillium strains as they emerged at Peoria. (Prove me wrong, please) .
The mycologists at the NRRL research centre in Peoria had steadily improved and improved and improved again Rake's variant and their final version, NRRL 1249.B21 produced - via surface cultivation - most of the world's wartime penicillin until quite late in the war.
At that point, submerged strain NRRL 832, from a non-Fleming strain first found in Belgium, took over.
I believe that Merck's chief consultant and OSRD medical chief ( giant conflict of interest alert !) A N Richards, supposedly Florey's second closest American friend, using as an excuse that America was now at war, deliberately held back the giving these improved strains to Florey.
All to further America's ( sorry ! Merck's) post-war commercial opportunities.
Nicolas Rasmussen, in his article "Of 'Small Men', Big Science and Bigger Business", looks much closer than most historians at the day to day workings of the medical wing of the famous OSRD.
He points to several examples where Richards authorizes the further spending of taxpayers' money, supposedly only for war weapons, on drug research that no longer had an obvious military use, because he claimed that keeping American's edge in their development would definitely benefit the nation.
If not in this war, or any war, how would the drug's successful development benefit a nation at war - supposedly the sole purpose of the OSRD, whose mandate was set up to expire the moment peace was declared ?
Richards doesn't say.
So let me suggest a more sinister purpose , because Rasmussen does not.
I note that the two examples that Rasmussen gives where the OSRD spends taxpayers money on projects that no longer seemed to have a military need were pet projects of Merck, the firm that Richards advised.
The first was the chemical synthesis work on penicillin , carried on well past the point (say June 1944) when biological penicillin was being produced en masse and cheaply.
The other was after mid 1943, when it was clear that cortisone would not help pilots fly higher longer - an important advantage for any nation's air force if proven so.
Merck got nothing for all the money it spent on synthetic penicillin but its finally successful efforts on cortisone was and is one of its biggest successes for both its scientific reputation and its pocketbook (the two of course being closely related).
First success with Cortisone would be an advantage to America as well as Merck, over European (Swiss) competitors --- but synthetic penicillin's success could only have come by crushing fellow American firm Pfizer and given the field to Merck.
How then would that serve America's interests, rather than merely Merck's?
Because Europe wasn't even in the running on biological penicillin in 1944.
Perhaps Richards, already a pensioner when he took on the job of heading the OSRD medical wing and with the rigidity of old age, still believed synthetic penicillin would better Pfizer's penicillin in price and yield.
Then Merck would beat their only European synthetic penicillin rival : Florey !
Normally, Vannevar Bush's OSRD - as in denying the British to atomic energy research - did a better job of using taxpayers' military-assigned money to screw America's European Allies' commercial chances after the war , without favouring any one American firm.
Richard's willingness to screw Pfizer and even his friend Florey, shows just how much further he was prepared to go to aid Merck.
But he needed pliant helpers to succeed.
Luckily for him, the NRRL's Robert Coghill seemed to have had a hard time accepting that research paid for by his employer , the US Department of Agriculture and ultimately the American public, belonged to the USDA.
And that this research shouldn't only go where a different agency's chief bureaucrat, A N Richards, wanted it to go - though he hadn't paid for it and had no statutory (legal) control over it.
However , I see Coghill, a misplaced chemist running a biological program, wanted in so badly on a "technically sweet" chemical problem (the synthesis of penicillin) that he sold out the farmers he had sworn to help.
Synthetic penicillin would only negate the ready market for hundreds of thousands of tons of farm waste corn steep liquor, farm waste whey and farm waste crude brown sugar, all used in the natural fermentation of penicillin and other antibiotics coming along in the pipeline.
Coghill did publicly announce that he was giving the top two commercial strains of penicillium (presumably NRRL 1249.B21 and 832) to the entire world in November 1943, about the same time as Florey first mentions having them.
Why ?
I can only suspect because they were about to become obsolete, as synthetic penicillin seemed only months away.
By April 1944, that no longer seemed so and Coghill was back on the side of the biological angels, publicly praising Pfizer's biological penicillin and modestly claiming a role in their success.
Coghill's talents seemed rather wasted in democratic America - I can see him as the ultimate bureaucratic survivor in Stalin's Russia, adroitly changing sides as the situation shifted, moment by moment.....
The first, in November 1941 ,was obtained from Dr Rake at Squibb - a higher producing mutant from Fleming's original strain.
The second time in November 1943, some un-named strains were obtained from Robert Coghill of the NRRL , while he was visiting Oxford .
But in the two crucial years in between ?
I see bugger all evidence that Florey got the latest improvements in penicillium strains as they emerged at Peoria. (Prove me wrong, please) .
The mycologists at the NRRL research centre in Peoria had steadily improved and improved and improved again Rake's variant and their final version, NRRL 1249.B21 produced - via surface cultivation - most of the world's wartime penicillin until quite late in the war.
At that point, submerged strain NRRL 832, from a non-Fleming strain first found in Belgium, took over.
I believe that Merck's chief consultant and OSRD medical chief ( giant conflict of interest alert !) A N Richards, supposedly Florey's second closest American friend, using as an excuse that America was now at war, deliberately held back the giving these improved strains to Florey.
All to further America's ( sorry ! Merck's) post-war commercial opportunities.
Nicolas Rasmussen, in his article "Of 'Small Men', Big Science and Bigger Business", looks much closer than most historians at the day to day workings of the medical wing of the famous OSRD.
He points to several examples where Richards authorizes the further spending of taxpayers' money, supposedly only for war weapons, on drug research that no longer had an obvious military use, because he claimed that keeping American's edge in their development would definitely benefit the nation.
If not in this war, or any war, how would the drug's successful development benefit a nation at war - supposedly the sole purpose of the OSRD, whose mandate was set up to expire the moment peace was declared ?
Richards doesn't say.
So let me suggest a more sinister purpose , because Rasmussen does not.
I note that the two examples that Rasmussen gives where the OSRD spends taxpayers money on projects that no longer seemed to have a military need were pet projects of Merck, the firm that Richards advised.
The first was the chemical synthesis work on penicillin , carried on well past the point (say June 1944) when biological penicillin was being produced en masse and cheaply.
The other was after mid 1943, when it was clear that cortisone would not help pilots fly higher longer - an important advantage for any nation's air force if proven so.
Merck got nothing for all the money it spent on synthetic penicillin but its finally successful efforts on cortisone was and is one of its biggest successes for both its scientific reputation and its pocketbook (the two of course being closely related).
First success with Cortisone would be an advantage to America as well as Merck, over European (Swiss) competitors --- but synthetic penicillin's success could only have come by crushing fellow American firm Pfizer and given the field to Merck.
How then would that serve America's interests, rather than merely Merck's?
Because Europe wasn't even in the running on biological penicillin in 1944.
Perhaps Richards, already a pensioner when he took on the job of heading the OSRD medical wing and with the rigidity of old age, still believed synthetic penicillin would better Pfizer's penicillin in price and yield.
Then Merck would beat their only European synthetic penicillin rival : Florey !
Normally, Vannevar Bush's OSRD - as in denying the British to atomic energy research - did a better job of using taxpayers' military-assigned money to screw America's European Allies' commercial chances after the war , without favouring any one American firm.
Richard's willingness to screw Pfizer and even his friend Florey, shows just how much further he was prepared to go to aid Merck.
But he needed pliant helpers to succeed.
Luckily for him, the NRRL's Robert Coghill seemed to have had a hard time accepting that research paid for by his employer , the US Department of Agriculture and ultimately the American public, belonged to the USDA.
And that this research shouldn't only go where a different agency's chief bureaucrat, A N Richards, wanted it to go - though he hadn't paid for it and had no statutory (legal) control over it.
However , I see Coghill, a misplaced chemist running a biological program, wanted in so badly on a "technically sweet" chemical problem (the synthesis of penicillin) that he sold out the farmers he had sworn to help.
Synthetic penicillin would only negate the ready market for hundreds of thousands of tons of farm waste corn steep liquor, farm waste whey and farm waste crude brown sugar, all used in the natural fermentation of penicillin and other antibiotics coming along in the pipeline.
Coghill did publicly announce that he was giving the top two commercial strains of penicillium (presumably NRRL 1249.B21 and 832) to the entire world in November 1943, about the same time as Florey first mentions having them.
Why ?
I can only suspect because they were about to become obsolete, as synthetic penicillin seemed only months away.
By April 1944, that no longer seemed so and Coghill was back on the side of the biological angels, publicly praising Pfizer's biological penicillin and modestly claiming a role in their success.
Coghill's talents seemed rather wasted in democratic America - I can see him as the ultimate bureaucratic survivor in Stalin's Russia, adroitly changing sides as the situation shifted, moment by moment.....
Friday, February 8, 2013
two is a coincidence, three is a pattern : the OSRD on the weak and the strong
It is a commonplace to note that Vannevar Bush's wartime agency the OSRD, the biggest of Washington's many wartime scientific bureaucracies, favoured the strongest companies and the strongest universities.
Coincidence, say many.
But the fact that the OSRD, the strongest companies and the strongest universities all ganged up together to deny penicillin to America's weakest of the weakest seems more than a long stream of coincidences : it betrays a pattern......
Coincidence, say many.
But the fact that the OSRD, the strongest companies and the strongest universities all ganged up together to deny penicillin to America's weakest of the weakest seems more than a long stream of coincidences : it betrays a pattern......
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
America LOSES WWII : because of quarrels between government agencies, such as over Penicillin
The above headline sounds bizarre to our ears, because we are used to only hearing it being used as the standard explanation given as to why Japan and Germany lost the (largely technical and scientific) world war against the Allies.
After all, both of these nations had talented and committed cadres of scientists and engineers but endless feuding between various sub sections of the government seriously diluted the impact they might have had on the war, if only they had worked together.
In Japan the Army and Navy Departments frequently seemed more at war with each other, than with America.
In the case of Germany, each of the senior figures in the Nazi hierarchy commanded a lot of semi-independent resources and each Nazi war lord seemed to spend as much time trying to grow at the expense of their political bureaucratic rivals, as in uniting against the common enemy.
But Vannevar Bush chooses, in the foreword to his famous "ENDLESS FRONTIER", not to see any serious conflicts in the American and Allied scientific and technical effort.
And we believe him - the historians (grateful for the steady diet of research grants to peacetime academics that he is credited with having created) above all .
And after all his side won ----- shouldn't that alone silence all potential criticism ?
Still, in this particular foreword, he chooses to blow his particular agency's horn very very carefully indeed, when it comes to penicillin.
So for once, it is not his own OSRD that he credits with seeing that "our grievously wounded men" got penicillin in time : he says it was "the government" that did the bang up job of co-ordinating the research and development that speeded penicillin up to the front.
For a very conservative Republican ,like Bush, to be praising "the government" is truly a startling sight. He more usually carefully distinguishes agencies like his own highly conservative OSRD from the left wing agencies filled with New Dealers, such as the WPB's own OPRD.
But what could he do ?
For his own right wing OSRD agency chose to take the totally wrong turn on the way to moving penicillin to the D-Day beaches and delivered not one tiny sliver of its vaunted synthetic penicillin to our troops or anyone else : not on June 6th 1944 and in fact, not ever.
It was left to the left wingers in the OPRD to get literally tons of penicillin to the Allied side, between the time they first took up the cause in September 1943 and the end of the war.
They did this not merely by the unimportant but useful work they did on the production side - for by statute this was their job, just as the OSRD's job was not production but research - but by also doing the OSRD's job , in an area of research that the OSRD choose to seriously neglect.
That was the OSRD-neglected research in studying ways to up the very front end of the penicillin process : upping the initial biological yield of penicillin.
Biology : horrors ! Just saying that word in front of Bush and the OSRD was like waving a garlic-infused cross at a vampire.
So we must credit the left wing OPRD with starting the research that resulted in that biological yield ( ie , yield before extraction) now being 2500 times as productive as it was in 1943 when the OSRD threw up its hands at the problem.
Just as the quarrelling Japanese Army and Navy did on radar, the two warring branches of Bush's "the government" , the OSRD and OPRD , came to a fork in the road on penicillin and instead of uniting to find a way to use the least resources to solve the problem, they disagreed and pursued independent courses.
Bush's Orwellian use of words like "the government" or "the nation" or "the Allies" ,to explain who won the war , allows him to dissolve any internal conflicts those huge collectivities might have encountered in very slowly moving their overwhelming larger populations into defeating much smaller and very resource-strapped enemies.
So historians mustn't simply accept Bush's Orwellian arguments on blind faith but instead carefully ask , if the nation or government "did" this or that , did that mean that all the nation/government do this or that or did just parts of it do while other parts disagreed, stood around doing nothing or even held things up ?
After all, on the evidence of their own internal memos, the OSRD not merely failed to produce the penicillin that saved our "grievously wounded", they also had no intention of wasting penicillin on anyone who couldn't aid the war effort on recovery, if they didn't have to.
That meant no wasting penicillin, if they had to choose, on those so severely wounded that if they did make a recovery, it would be to discharge and a permanent disability pension.
And it meant, that if they had to chose between saving a boy dying of endocarditis and instantly curing a boy GI of VD so he could quickly return (to perhaps die) on the Italian frontlines, they'd won't help the endocarditis case, because his disease-weakened heart would not let him do much for the war effort, even if he did recover.
So, if the only thing I ever do in my life is to destroy the OSRD's reputation for furthering penicillin when what they actually did was hold it up and then conspire to use it for truly wicked eugenic ends, I will consider my life well lived....
After all, both of these nations had talented and committed cadres of scientists and engineers but endless feuding between various sub sections of the government seriously diluted the impact they might have had on the war, if only they had worked together.
In Japan the Army and Navy Departments frequently seemed more at war with each other, than with America.
In the case of Germany, each of the senior figures in the Nazi hierarchy commanded a lot of semi-independent resources and each Nazi war lord seemed to spend as much time trying to grow at the expense of their political bureaucratic rivals, as in uniting against the common enemy.
But Vannevar Bush chooses, in the foreword to his famous "ENDLESS FRONTIER", not to see any serious conflicts in the American and Allied scientific and technical effort.
And we believe him - the historians (grateful for the steady diet of research grants to peacetime academics that he is credited with having created) above all .
And after all his side won ----- shouldn't that alone silence all potential criticism ?
Still, in this particular foreword, he chooses to blow his particular agency's horn very very carefully indeed, when it comes to penicillin.
So for once, it is not his own OSRD that he credits with seeing that "our grievously wounded men" got penicillin in time : he says it was "the government" that did the bang up job of co-ordinating the research and development that speeded penicillin up to the front.
For a very conservative Republican ,like Bush, to be praising "the government" is truly a startling sight. He more usually carefully distinguishes agencies like his own highly conservative OSRD from the left wing agencies filled with New Dealers, such as the WPB's own OPRD.
But what could he do ?
For his own right wing OSRD agency chose to take the totally wrong turn on the way to moving penicillin to the D-Day beaches and delivered not one tiny sliver of its vaunted synthetic penicillin to our troops or anyone else : not on June 6th 1944 and in fact, not ever.
It was left to the left wingers in the OPRD to get literally tons of penicillin to the Allied side, between the time they first took up the cause in September 1943 and the end of the war.
They did this not merely by the unimportant but useful work they did on the production side - for by statute this was their job, just as the OSRD's job was not production but research - but by also doing the OSRD's job , in an area of research that the OSRD choose to seriously neglect.
That was the OSRD-neglected research in studying ways to up the very front end of the penicillin process : upping the initial biological yield of penicillin.
Biology : horrors ! Just saying that word in front of Bush and the OSRD was like waving a garlic-infused cross at a vampire.
So we must credit the left wing OPRD with starting the research that resulted in that biological yield ( ie , yield before extraction) now being 2500 times as productive as it was in 1943 when the OSRD threw up its hands at the problem.
Just as the quarrelling Japanese Army and Navy did on radar, the two warring branches of Bush's "the government" , the OSRD and OPRD , came to a fork in the road on penicillin and instead of uniting to find a way to use the least resources to solve the problem, they disagreed and pursued independent courses.
Bush's Orwellian use of words like "the government" or "the nation" or "the Allies" ,to explain who won the war , allows him to dissolve any internal conflicts those huge collectivities might have encountered in very slowly moving their overwhelming larger populations into defeating much smaller and very resource-strapped enemies.
So historians mustn't simply accept Bush's Orwellian arguments on blind faith but instead carefully ask , if the nation or government "did" this or that , did that mean that all the nation/government do this or that or did just parts of it do while other parts disagreed, stood around doing nothing or even held things up ?
After all, on the evidence of their own internal memos, the OSRD not merely failed to produce the penicillin that saved our "grievously wounded", they also had no intention of wasting penicillin on anyone who couldn't aid the war effort on recovery, if they didn't have to.
That meant no wasting penicillin, if they had to choose, on those so severely wounded that if they did make a recovery, it would be to discharge and a permanent disability pension.
And it meant, that if they had to chose between saving a boy dying of endocarditis and instantly curing a boy GI of VD so he could quickly return (to perhaps die) on the Italian frontlines, they'd won't help the endocarditis case, because his disease-weakened heart would not let him do much for the war effort, even if he did recover.
So, if the only thing I ever do in my life is to destroy the OSRD's reputation for furthering penicillin when what they actually did was hold it up and then conspire to use it for truly wicked eugenic ends, I will consider my life well lived....
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Why My Urgency ?
- Michael Marshall
- Nova Scotia
- Histories of WWII all start with the presumption that it was a war raged between humans and human ideologies, with Nature’s climate and geography as side issues easily surmounted.My blog, on the contrary will only accept that it was conflict between humans and their ideology that STARTED the war but that it was the barriers thrown up by Mother Nature (geography & climate) that turned it into a war that lasted between 6 to 15 years and expanded to thoroughly involve all the world’s oceans and continents. High Modernity may have started the war convinced that Nature had been conquered and was about to be soon replaced by human Synthetic Autarky and that only human Tiger tanks and human Typhoon planes were to be feared. But by the end, more and more people had lost their naive faith in Scientism and were beginning to accept that humanity was thoroughly entangled with both the Nature of plants, animals & microbes as well as the Nature of so called “lesser” humanity. By 1965, the world was definitely entering the Age of Entanglement. Billions still believed - at least in part -with the promises of High Modernity but intellectually & emotionally, it was no longer dominant...