In 1928-1929, (Martin) Henry Dawson fell upon an explanation for something the Era of Modernity definitely felt needed explaining.
How, in the name of Darwin , if the bacteria were so small, weak and stupid , had they survived on the Earth dozens of times longer than their next nearest (and much larger and much more complex) rivals ?
Modernity talked of the survival of the fittest and of the decline of the unfit (though not of the decline of the un-fittest, fascinatingly enough !)
To Modernity's advocates, it was clear that the big and the smart and the complex - like humans - should survive forever while Life's primitive beginnings among the tiny and the simple and the weak should have long ago disappeared.
Dawson discovered that while the Dinosaurs had died alone, the bacteria survived by surviving together : collectively sharing all their different DNA and genes through the process of Horizontal Gene Transfer in times of collective crisis.
Think of it as a sort of bacterial free public lending library with branches all over the world with every patron both borrower and potential author.
When, for example, easy to eat sucrose was more abundant than hard to eat lactose, bacteria with sucrose-eating preferences prospered and multiplied in numbers while bacteria that preferred lactose were handicapped and struggled to survive in a very few numbers.
But when the sucrose supply failed the very few "handicapped" lactose-eating bacteria suddenly prospered AND donated some of their numbers' DNA and lactose-eating genes to the sucrose-preferring majority.
Together, enough bacteria survived in this awkward new niche until supplies of sucrose re-emerged.
Dawson seemed to have internalized this message from the ancient roots of Life because during his remaining life, he focussed on three areas of human existence where he could advocate his lonely idea that humans needed to stay connected together and share all their strengths and ideas, if they wished to survive at all.
In the early Thirties he worked on raising the profile of the chronically handicapped (think of them as today's lactose-eaters) - people whom both society and science thought were valueless - people we neglected and locked away out of sight.
Working with Dr SS Goldwater, he helped established the first ever serious cooperative research effort on chronic diseases on what was then called Welfare Island in NY.
That job completed successfully, he then volunteered to be the general dogsbody/ general secretary of the Third International Congress on Microbiology.
This was a international project hoping that by bringing together all the world's microbiologists and giving them a chance to get to know each other in person, bonds of common humanity might help reduce growing war tensions between the nations they belonged to.
During WWI, these same people had all ended up more or less willingly involved in the war killing machine , designing germ and chemical weapons to kill their fellow scientists from other nations , along with the rest of the world.
Now, because of coming to know people from the other side as human beings not just names of a science paper, it was hoped this might still their hand from so readily creating new germ plagues for their military masters , if there be another big war.
By April 1940 , this effort - badly ruined by the onset of WWII on the very day the Congress opened - had been pretty well completed.
Dawson was very troubled that April by two very similar failures of the human fabric to hold together.
One was the unwillingness of the world's neutral nations to go to the defence of their fellow nations even when collectively these bystanders were far bigger than the bullies of Germany, Japan and Italy.
Instead each small neutral nation only got militarily involved when they were directly attacked - by then it was much too late, as out-numbered and all alone they fell one by one by one.
Dawson saw this self-centred go-it-alone-ness back at home in the new fund-raising style of Polio advocates.
Traditionally organizations devoted to combating other diseases that affected primarily children, like RHD (Rheumatic Heart Disease) , had appealed to well to do adults' sense of charity and compassion for others.
The well to do - adults or not - rarely got RHD , so they got nothing for the money gave away but a warm fuzzy feeling of doing good.
But the crippling form of Polio was a disease primarily of the well -off suburbs and the Polio organizations sought to have the parents of victims raise money for their kids' aid.
This form of patient and parent self group goes un-noticed today it is so common.
But the parents of RHD children were too poor, too minority, too immigrant to have the kind of time, money and political clout to get aid for their kids.
Yet their disease crippled and killed dozens of times more kids than the well-publicized Polio ever did.
Why should it be ignored because the well-to-do suburbs said "its not my family's disease ?"
He saw the self-centredness at his university as well that Fall.
Traditional courses for med students on helping the sick who were poor (ie Social Medicine or 4F medicine) were being dumped and replaced by new War Medicine courses on helping the 1A draftees better fight the upcoming war ... so that the well-to-do would remain safe.
But a war fought by nations almost as selfish and self-centred as the Nazis were never going to be easily sold as a moral effort.
And few people work or fight readily and effectively for a low sordid war.
Dawson felt that defending the small, poor and weak during a Total War was the best visible way for the Allies to show they were truly different than the Nazis.
So Dawson did not work on germ or chemical warfare to aid the war effort --- instead, and provocatively - he poured all his energy into trying to make penicillin to save the lives of the most useless of the useless mouths, the 4Fs of the 4Fs --- the young SBE patients dying of invariably fatal endocarditis.
Dying himself, his selflessness proved contagious until more than more people around the world took up his cause of selfless penicillin.
Because penicillin has remained pubic domain and naturally made, it remains the world's cheapest best lifesaver - curing millions who would normally be too poor to get medicine.
Ironically, this in turn has quelled long endemic diseases that frequently killed the sort of people who don't give a tinker's damn about the sick and the poor .
The weft of selfless penicillin has re-connected all the selfish warps of the human fabric...
How, in the name of Darwin , if the bacteria were so small, weak and stupid , had they survived on the Earth dozens of times longer than their next nearest (and much larger and much more complex) rivals ?
Modernity talked of the survival of the fittest and of the decline of the unfit (though not of the decline of the un-fittest, fascinatingly enough !)
To Modernity's advocates, it was clear that the big and the smart and the complex - like humans - should survive forever while Life's primitive beginnings among the tiny and the simple and the weak should have long ago disappeared.
Dawson discovered that while the Dinosaurs had died alone, the bacteria survived by surviving together : collectively sharing all their different DNA and genes through the process of Horizontal Gene Transfer in times of collective crisis.
Think of it as a sort of bacterial free public lending library with branches all over the world with every patron both borrower and potential author.
When, for example, easy to eat sucrose was more abundant than hard to eat lactose, bacteria with sucrose-eating preferences prospered and multiplied in numbers while bacteria that preferred lactose were handicapped and struggled to survive in a very few numbers.
But when the sucrose supply failed the very few "handicapped" lactose-eating bacteria suddenly prospered AND donated some of their numbers' DNA and lactose-eating genes to the sucrose-preferring majority.
Together, enough bacteria survived in this awkward new niche until supplies of sucrose re-emerged.
Dawson seemed to have internalized this message from the ancient roots of Life because during his remaining life, he focussed on three areas of human existence where he could advocate his lonely idea that humans needed to stay connected together and share all their strengths and ideas, if they wished to survive at all.
In the early Thirties he worked on raising the profile of the chronically handicapped (think of them as today's lactose-eaters) - people whom both society and science thought were valueless - people we neglected and locked away out of sight.
Working with Dr SS Goldwater, he helped established the first ever serious cooperative research effort on chronic diseases on what was then called Welfare Island in NY.
That job completed successfully, he then volunteered to be the general dogsbody/ general secretary of the Third International Congress on Microbiology.
This was a international project hoping that by bringing together all the world's microbiologists and giving them a chance to get to know each other in person, bonds of common humanity might help reduce growing war tensions between the nations they belonged to.
During WWI, these same people had all ended up more or less willingly involved in the war killing machine , designing germ and chemical weapons to kill their fellow scientists from other nations , along with the rest of the world.
Now, because of coming to know people from the other side as human beings not just names of a science paper, it was hoped this might still their hand from so readily creating new germ plagues for their military masters , if there be another big war.
By April 1940 , this effort - badly ruined by the onset of WWII on the very day the Congress opened - had been pretty well completed.
Dawson was very troubled that April by two very similar failures of the human fabric to hold together.
One was the unwillingness of the world's neutral nations to go to the defence of their fellow nations even when collectively these bystanders were far bigger than the bullies of Germany, Japan and Italy.
Instead each small neutral nation only got militarily involved when they were directly attacked - by then it was much too late, as out-numbered and all alone they fell one by one by one.
Dawson saw this self-centred go-it-alone-ness back at home in the new fund-raising style of Polio advocates.
Traditionally organizations devoted to combating other diseases that affected primarily children, like RHD (Rheumatic Heart Disease) , had appealed to well to do adults' sense of charity and compassion for others.
The well to do - adults or not - rarely got RHD , so they got nothing for the money gave away but a warm fuzzy feeling of doing good.
But the crippling form of Polio was a disease primarily of the well -off suburbs and the Polio organizations sought to have the parents of victims raise money for their kids' aid.
This form of patient and parent self group goes un-noticed today it is so common.
But the parents of RHD children were too poor, too minority, too immigrant to have the kind of time, money and political clout to get aid for their kids.
Yet their disease crippled and killed dozens of times more kids than the well-publicized Polio ever did.
Why should it be ignored because the well-to-do suburbs said "its not my family's disease ?"
He saw the self-centredness at his university as well that Fall.
Traditional courses for med students on helping the sick who were poor (ie Social Medicine or 4F medicine) were being dumped and replaced by new War Medicine courses on helping the 1A draftees better fight the upcoming war ... so that the well-to-do would remain safe.
But a war fought by nations almost as selfish and self-centred as the Nazis were never going to be easily sold as a moral effort.
And few people work or fight readily and effectively for a low sordid war.
Dawson felt that defending the small, poor and weak during a Total War was the best visible way for the Allies to show they were truly different than the Nazis.
So Dawson did not work on germ or chemical warfare to aid the war effort --- instead, and provocatively - he poured all his energy into trying to make penicillin to save the lives of the most useless of the useless mouths, the 4Fs of the 4Fs --- the young SBE patients dying of invariably fatal endocarditis.
Dying himself, his selflessness proved contagious until more than more people around the world took up his cause of selfless penicillin.
Because penicillin has remained pubic domain and naturally made, it remains the world's cheapest best lifesaver - curing millions who would normally be too poor to get medicine.
Ironically, this in turn has quelled long endemic diseases that frequently killed the sort of people who don't give a tinker's damn about the sick and the poor .
The weft of selfless penicillin has re-connected all the selfish warps of the human fabric...
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