In 1940, Big Pharma only wants to sell its profitable-expensive (patented drugs) to those who could afford to pay for them directly : just as the AMA only wanted doctors to heal those who could afford to pay directly for its members profitably-expensive services.
Against this, some doctors like Henry Dawson believed that all life dined at a common table and that all life deserved a chance to live , all life deserved medical care, including penicillin.
He did not believe in dividing the world into "life worthy of wartime penicillin" and "life unworthy of wartime penicillin".
When the AMA and Big Pharma, working together at the OSRD and the NAS , thought and acted differently , he promoted among his fellow doctors the idea of hospital-made inclusive penicillin.
Inclusive Penicillin was that hospital made by individual doctors , without thought of patents or personal gain, to save the lives of all those regarded by the government's medical establishment as being "life unworthy of wartime penicillin".
The movement consisted of just Dawson's team at first, then people he directly convinced to follow his ideals.
It then spread all around the world as more and more doctors , encouraged by an awakened and angered laity, urged them on.
All the dramatic new stories, on young mothers and young children snatched from certain death at the last minute by minute amounts of penicillin flown around the world by seconded heavy bombers, seemed to have had an unexpected secondary affect.
Suddenly many of the modern era's population rediscovered feelings of compassion and empathy they thought they had successfully exorcised under the rationalism and utilitarianism
of modern culture.
Their hearts softened at the sight of all those saved babies, children of strangers, and they looked at all their neighbours and all strangers in a new, kindlier light .
An post-modern light ...
Showing posts with label inclusive penicillin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inclusive penicillin. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Despite Eric Lax, Howard Florey is still "Box Office Poison" to women readers
And as every book editor well knows , most readers of narrative fiction/non-fiction are women.
But in the Lax take on the wartime penicillin saga, the hero offered up is a man who leaves his deaf middle class wife to ride around on her bike in the rain collecting urine from penicillin patients while he 'has it off' with his aristocratic mistress in the luxurious bath and bedroom suite he had at his office in (never-Blitzed) Oxford England .
And this at a time when millions of Britons in the rest of the UK were being bombed out their homes by the Blitz and (barely) living in makeshift shelters.
Charming, really charming !
Just of the sort of hero women readers want to cuddle up to - Not.
The character - or lack of it - of Howard Florey is what made Eric Lax's recent biography such a flop among ordinary readers.
So, despite the fact that a survey of thousands of American women found they considered penicillin the most important news story of the entire 20th century , we still have never had a successful popular book or movie about the dramatic wartime history of penicillin.
What is missing in all past efforts is a focus on the one classical hero in the whole saga : the dying Dr Dawson and his unrelenting efforts to make penicillin inclusive not exclusive.
That and a too trusting reliance by previous writers upon the official histories rather than digging deeper into the primary records.
Because the people in Washington and London who wrote the official histories determined, above all, to cover up their very expensive and very time-wasting wartime flop : the synthetic penicillin project led by Florey and George Merck and paid for mostly by the taxpayers - as always.
So they tried to pretend that the stone these builders rejected had really been their idea all along. With Dawson prematurely dead at war's end and unable to set the record straight , it was - literally - dead simple.
Women, around the world , will buy a popular history about wartime penicillin by the tens of millions of copies - with the right set of heroes and villains laid out before them.
"The smallest Manhattan Project : the unexpected triumph of inclusive penicillin" will do just that .....
But in the Lax take on the wartime penicillin saga, the hero offered up is a man who leaves his deaf middle class wife to ride around on her bike in the rain collecting urine from penicillin patients while he 'has it off' with his aristocratic mistress in the luxurious bath and bedroom suite he had at his office in (never-Blitzed) Oxford England .
And this at a time when millions of Britons in the rest of the UK were being bombed out their homes by the Blitz and (barely) living in makeshift shelters.
Charming, really charming !
Just of the sort of hero women readers want to cuddle up to - Not.
The character - or lack of it - of Howard Florey is what made Eric Lax's recent biography such a flop among ordinary readers.
So, despite the fact that a survey of thousands of American women found they considered penicillin the most important news story of the entire 20th century , we still have never had a successful popular book or movie about the dramatic wartime history of penicillin.
What is missing in all past efforts is a focus on the one classical hero in the whole saga : the dying Dr Dawson and his unrelenting efforts to make penicillin inclusive not exclusive.
That and a too trusting reliance by previous writers upon the official histories rather than digging deeper into the primary records.
Because the people in Washington and London who wrote the official histories determined, above all, to cover up their very expensive and very time-wasting wartime flop : the synthetic penicillin project led by Florey and George Merck and paid for mostly by the taxpayers - as always.
So they tried to pretend that the stone these builders rejected had really been their idea all along. With Dawson prematurely dead at war's end and unable to set the record straight , it was - literally - dead simple.
Women, around the world , will buy a popular history about wartime penicillin by the tens of millions of copies - with the right set of heroes and villains laid out before them.
"The smallest Manhattan Project : the unexpected triumph of inclusive penicillin" will do just that .....
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