Tired, Poor or Huddled

Roche's Avastin-for-all versus Henry Dawson's Penicillin-for-all , what's the difference ?

Avastin is not in short supply and Roche sells it to all, regardless of race gender et al.

Penicillin G : ditto,ditto .

But Avastin costs $100,000 a year and only extends life an average of 4 months.

In bulk, Penicillin G is only about $1 for a two week long life-saving treatment.

The Manhattan Project for the small

Gather 'round kiddies, as teacher tells you how America burned a hundred thousand children to a crisp, along with their mommies and daddies and grandmas.

Oh wait ---------- darn !! ------ there's a subtitle !

Ah hem.

Now children , have you ever been so sick that you have to go to the doctor ? Well sometimes children are so very sick that the doctor even comes to their house - and at top speed to.

Better for America winning friends : A-bomb or 'Penicillin-for-all' ?

How was the post-war Pax Americana to be best created ?

Was it best to intimidate other nations into being friendly to America by reminding them who held the A-Bomb, and held it alone ?

Or was it best to freely give away 'Penicillin-for-all' , to hope to win other nations' respect by this example of America's open-hearted generosity ?

In other words, was it best for America to project itself as the Gordon Gekko side of Manhattan and reward the efforts of those 'Masters of the Universe', Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves ?

Or was it best to project itself as the Emma Lazarus side of Manhattan and exalt the efforts of the smallest Manhattan Project , that of Henry Dawson, Karl Meyer, Eleanor Chaffee and Gladys Hobby ?

FDR and Churchill beat Hitler and Tojo - and then they tried to oppose Henry Dawson...

Martin "Henry" Dawson, a dying doctor.

A lapsed Scottish Presbyterian, but of the old school, the kind  not easily stopped, not when they believed they were duty-bound to do what was right.

A lapsed Calvinist on a catholic mission.

 For Dawson's goal was "Penicillin-for-all".

Particularly at the height of a Total War in which - if you believed the newspapers - his Allied nation opposed the Nazis mostly for their nasty habit of mentally dividing the world in the deserving elect and the non-deserving non-elect.

Of course, in fact,  much of the Allied world mentally did the same - and publicly opposing Dawson's goal merely exposed this awkward fact.

Poor Frank and Winnie when they took on Henry : they simply never stood a chance....

Gladys Hobby : a Calvinist, on a catholic mission...

From September 1940 till December 1943, Dr Gladys Hobby, a devout Presbyterian on a catholic mission ("Penicillin-for-all") , daily visited the Green wards of Columbia-Presbyterian hospital, where the young victims of green SBE waited out their inevitable deaths.

Daily, she held aloft before them a petri dish just aglow with radiated golden penicillium mold, as if it were some marvelous medical monstrance.

As she and her tiny team undoubtedly believed it was.

Pen !!!! Stat !!!!!!!

In the house of the beta-lactams there are many mansions and one might think the most modest one might be occupied by the oldest beta-lactam, the only begetter , the original,  penicillin G.

But it 'taint necessarily so' .

Talking to an emergency ward nurse recently I asked her if they ever used penicillin G much these days.

"Oh my yes ",she said, but added with a smile, "we don't call it penicillin G any more."

"What do you call it then?" , I asked.

"We call it 'Pen Stat' and we say it like we might say 'Code Blue' ..."

Nice to know it is still in the medical armoire and still pulled out whenever the going gets tough and the tough get going : Pen !!!!! Stat !!!!!!

The very smallest Manhattan Project improved the lives of ten billion people

That is an awful lot of us , being positively affected by so few of them.

Many people today would like to do something to make our world a better place but are overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible odds against having any visible effect.

Take heart !

There was never more than three other people at a time involved with Dr Martin Henry Dawson in his five year long quest to bring forth  'penicillin for all'.

His tiny project had no government grants grants nor much enthusiastic institutional support from his own university.

 Even Dawson's immediate bosses opposed his efforts - but this was nothing to the resistance he got from the Anglo-American medical establishment.

That medical establishment was firmly enmeshed within the wartime governments of "win the war at all costs (to human rights)" FDR and Churchill.

Dawson himself was dying the whole time of his quest.

Dying of a particularly debilitating disease (Myasthenia Gravis , MG) , well before the days when patients with it could expect to make their way through semi-normal days.