One of the saddest ironies of the fifteen wasted years before the world got the best lifesaver ever known - penicillin - was that it was real chemists who finally delivered natural penicillin in time for D-Day and to save the millions under threat of epidemic deaths in the aftermath of WWII.
Let us then honor them - names like Glaxo's Harry Jephcott , Pfizer's John L Smith and the WPB-OPRD's Larry Elder.
By contrast, it was chemist manques - chemist wannabes - who wasted decades, millions of human lives and millions in taxpayers' money in a hubris-fueled chase after the mirage of man-made penicillin.
I can't help feeling that perhaps suffering humankind might have been much better off in WWII if three in particular - Howard Florey, AN Richards, and George W Merck - had simply been put against the nearest wall and shot.
Modernity's defining sin (too ancient to be labelled an original sin) was emotional autarky - and it was mostly a modernity male sort of sin.
These males' sin was their overweening belief that superior humans such as themselves, as individuals, as individual firms and as individual nations, could go it alone along the road to complete success, without needing any help from other people or from Mother Nature.
So Modernity resolved to abhor anything made only by Nature - Nature being something they viewed as simple and simple-minded.
From artificial food to artificial wool and artificial childbirth, they sought to duplicate and improve natural successes ... and then eliminate their originals.
The ads that appealed to great grandma and grandpa talked up the artificial, synthetic, man-made origins of the goods they were trying to sell, in the way that ads today talk up the natural origins of their goods and services on offer.
Real workaday chemists loved the glory of making man-made miracles as much as anyone, but having experienced repeatedly the real world requirements of meeting deadlines and budgets , they also knew when the natural or semi-natural route was cheaper, faster, easier and better.
Wannabe chemists, social miles above the soiled shop floor and earning a living either as academic-only chemists or as former chem grads now in other careers , loved chemistry's sizzle not its steak - they saw only the glories and none of its costs.
Robert Coghill is a particularly sad case.
A university chemist hired to run a regional government biological lab trying to find uses for farmers' waste byproducts, he betrayed his employers by instead working hard to synthesize penicillin , which, if successful, would have limited the biggest market for one of his employers' largest waste products !
He was basically a good man who was seduced by the siren calls of Merck-Richars-Florey synthetic triad and invited to become part of what was predicted to be the biggest man-made chemical synthesis triumph ever.
But seeking after personal glory rather than working fullout on hastening the end of a very wicked war can never be totally excused.
Because even more than at some celebrity "WE ARE THE WORLD" singalong in aid of charity , a world war is always the place and time to park all egos at the doorway...
Let us then honor them - names like Glaxo's Harry Jephcott , Pfizer's John L Smith and the WPB-OPRD's Larry Elder.
By contrast, it was chemist manques - chemist wannabes - who wasted decades, millions of human lives and millions in taxpayers' money in a hubris-fueled chase after the mirage of man-made penicillin.
I can't help feeling that perhaps suffering humankind might have been much better off in WWII if three in particular - Howard Florey, AN Richards, and George W Merck - had simply been put against the nearest wall and shot.
Modernity's defining sin (too ancient to be labelled an original sin) was emotional autarky - and it was mostly a modernity male sort of sin.
These males' sin was their overweening belief that superior humans such as themselves, as individuals, as individual firms and as individual nations, could go it alone along the road to complete success, without needing any help from other people or from Mother Nature.
So Modernity resolved to abhor anything made only by Nature - Nature being something they viewed as simple and simple-minded.
From artificial food to artificial wool and artificial childbirth, they sought to duplicate and improve natural successes ... and then eliminate their originals.
The ads that appealed to great grandma and grandpa talked up the artificial, synthetic, man-made origins of the goods they were trying to sell, in the way that ads today talk up the natural origins of their goods and services on offer.
Real workaday chemists loved the glory of making man-made miracles as much as anyone, but having experienced repeatedly the real world requirements of meeting deadlines and budgets , they also knew when the natural or semi-natural route was cheaper, faster, easier and better.
Wannabe chemists, social miles above the soiled shop floor and earning a living either as academic-only chemists or as former chem grads now in other careers , loved chemistry's sizzle not its steak - they saw only the glories and none of its costs.
Robert Coghill is a particularly sad case.
A university chemist hired to run a regional government biological lab trying to find uses for farmers' waste byproducts, he betrayed his employers by instead working hard to synthesize penicillin , which, if successful, would have limited the biggest market for one of his employers' largest waste products !
He was basically a good man who was seduced by the siren calls of Merck-Richars-Florey synthetic triad and invited to become part of what was predicted to be the biggest man-made chemical synthesis triumph ever.
But seeking after personal glory rather than working fullout on hastening the end of a very wicked war can never be totally excused.
Because even more than at some celebrity "WE ARE THE WORLD" singalong in aid of charity , a world war is always the place and time to park all egos at the doorway...
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