The little Project that Could

Once upon a time there was a little yellow penicillin factory located very near that Great Grey Bridge that connects Fort Lee, New Jersey and Upper Manhattan.

It wasn't a very big operation - particularly not compared to the huge war-dealing projects located all over the world in all the combat nations in those years between 1940 and 1945.

But the long term impact it has had on all of us is far greater than any of its much bigger wartime rivals --- even the one that produced The Bomb and promised us safe perpetually renewable electricity at prices too cheap to meter.

It is only natural for our children and grandchildren, being very small themselves, to feel that a small person or group can never best those much bigger than themselves.

But I think my book on the story of the smallest Manhattan Project can be an object lesson  to our children and grandkids that size isn't everything in matters moral --- that a strong heart and a fierce determination to do right can indeed move mountains.

If I can even move a handful of kids to grow up determined to do the right thing by all the smallest and weakest among us, I will feel that my book efforts will have been worth it....
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Irony : the smallest Manhattan Project has had the biggest impact in making our world better

If size truly mattered (the bigger the better), then the smallest of the wartime Manhattan projects wouldn't matter.

But it doesn't and so it did (matter).

The inclusive delivery of cheap, safe, non-patented natural penicillin was the biggest single improvement that the world saw in the 20th century.

Not primarily because of penicillin's life-saving abilities, awesome as they were and remain.

It is more from the fact that wartime penicillin was so successfully and so surprisingly converted from its intended use as a scarce, patented, expensive, exclusive-to-the-Allied-troops-only medicine by a tiny ragtag group of "acting-up" civilians and doctors.

Wartime penicillin was turned into something that was mass produced cheaply from non-patented natural penicillin for all the wartime world to benefit from : friend and foe, civilian and soldier, those judged 'worthy' and those judge  'unworthy' of life alike.

The 'inclusively of all life' was the finest legacy that the smallest Manhattan Project left for us.

Henry Dawson had intended it to combat wartime medical eugenics at home and in Germany.

But later his example was used time and again to combat any future possible attempts  to go down the deadly eugenic medical route.

The biggest Manhattan Project was all about exclusivity and secrecy - even claiming that mere unspoken thoughts about nuclear energy were born secret and were the exclusive property of the American government.

But what main stream politician today dares aim for majority government by running on a platform of race, gender, class and eugenic exclusivity ?

This then is Henry Dawson's true legacy and the tiny size of his project matters not a jot or tittle .....

I propose to a (book) editor.... in an elevator

Clutching my manuscript to my heaving chest (insert bodice here) I got down on one knee and said to her , "This Manhattan Project is from Venus ---- and so are most of your customers."

"So enough already on any more books about Manhattan Projects that kill. This wartime Manhattan P. saved lives : its all about life and love and the whole nine months."

"Listen to your mother, she says you won't even be here if it wasn't for penicillin : cheap, abundant, natural, non-patented penicillin."

"Now does that sound like how Big Pharma normally operates ?

Yeah, exactly --- this time, despite America being at war, Doctor Mom was in charge and she saw to it that it was done up right."

"If this book proposal has legs - and I think it does , try to think of those legs as being shapely, shaved and belong to an avid reader of character-driven narratives ."

"Besides, market-wise, isn't it long overdue for a Good News Story to come out of WWII's Bad News War ?"

"Give it a read and then get back to me before the bidding war gets heavy -----  'cause, baby, this here book project is all about peace, love and understanding...."

Dies Mirabilis : October 16th 1940 : the first ever peacetime 1A Draft and the first ever 4F penicillin needle

Oh, to be there , just to see the Janus-like faces of Columbia University's campus on dies mirabilis, October 16th 1940.

Over in one corner, led by blustery University President Butler himself, most of the campus was busily and very publicly (cue the news reel cameras) engaged in the nation's first ever peacetime draft registration process : busy triaging the best 1A youth away from the 4F rejects.

Over in another corner of the campus, a tiny band of four individuals was just as busily triaging away in the opposition direction.

Led by two world war one frontline military veterans, they had deliberately - almost provocatively - picked this, of all sacred days in WASPish America's calendar - to usher in the Age of Antibiotics.

Their choice of the first ever patients was equally provocative, not merely that one was Black and the other one was Jewish, but because both were SBEs : the 4Fs of the 4Fs, in Draft Registration terms.

 Both were dying from the disease rated as about "one hundred and ten" on a priority list running from one to one hundred on diseases of military priority.

Later on (by 1943), Columbia's campus again resumed a Janus-like cast, as one part beavered away at The Bomb, determined to se it at working ,killing, before peace broke out , while in another part of the campus, our tiny team was at work trying to see penicillin in high production, before death and pestilence broke out in the occupied lands.

But I like to think we will never again see such a contrasting day in such a small place, as we did on October 16th 1940 at Columbia University ....