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

By pointed contrast , three working industrial chemists - men who had long struggled on the factory floor coming up with chemical solutions that reliably delivered safe, profitable, productive chemicals on time and on budget - saw naturally produced penicillin as the best solution.

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" .

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 ....

Penicillin : a bunch of biologists who put all their faith in chemistry vs two chemists who put all their faith in biology

In the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of wartime penicillin it should hardly be surprising that about the only strong supporters of natural ,biological, penicillin in the upper echelons of the overall enterprise were two professional chemists : Larry Elder of the American Office for Production Research and Development (the OPRD) and Harry Jephcott of the British drug company, Glaxo.

Or that the group most strongly bewitched by the thought of synthetic penicillin were a bunch of medical doctors with Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming leading the charge (with the OSRD and MRC close behind): the sort of scientists who might have been thought would normally occupy a place at the biological end of  hard science.....

Between Wartime Penicillin's initial failure ( Chemistry) and its final success (Biology) stood a third party : the humanitarians

When I call Henry Dawson "Penicillin's Third Man", I am being more than ordinarily facetious.

Penicilin's problem was chemistry-besotted biologists, the solution was  biologically-pragmatic chemists and the connecting threat were a tiny group of humanitarian-minded clinicians.


I mean that penicillin's main problem was - dating from September 1928 - was that its initial (biological) investigators  -names like Fleming,Florey and Richards spring to mind - tacitly accepted penicillium production levels of one microgram of penicillin per gram of medium as a given.

 As a result, they sought - blinker-eyed - only one possible solution : the total chemical synthesis of penicillin.

By contrast, it was chemist Larry Elder who finally pushed mycologists into doing their jobs like people on a mission, not people politely going through the motions.

And it was Larry who sought out "farmer-minded" scientists from any and all fields to up penicillium yields the old-fashioned way, the way farmers had successfully done so with other species for thousands of years : trial and error selective breeding.

But before people like Larry could be called in on the file, the public in September 1943 had to be outraged, ("its been 15 years since penicillin was discovered and  its still in desperately short supply !") and demanding that the authorities put new people on the job to finally start making this stuff - now - and in bulk.

Elder, Colitti, Queen, Hearst never get the credit they deserve

The humanitarians like Henry Dawson, Robert Pulvertaft, Rudy Schulinger , Frank Queen and Dante Colitti all pushed the civil and military powers to be to make penicillin available for all who are dying - now !

And when the purple-toned slash yellow press of Citizen Hearst picked up on their efforts, all the pieces fell into place.

In less than six months, the government of America was pulling a little bit of its money out from making nuclear bombs and germ warfare and towards saving lives and the job was done.

 America - and soon the world - would be awash with cheap naturally-breed penicillium-made penicillin....