Scarce British penicillin , 1943 -1944 -1945 : a CHOICE or a failure ?

Churchill's electoral defeat in July 1945 was ensured in late September 1942.

To prove that it really did reject the soon to be released Beveridge Report, the British (Conservative Party-dominated) government's all-powerful Ministry of Supply (MOS), together with representatives of the academic-military-civil servant medical science establishment, met on that date to set the British Commonwealth's production levels for penicillin for the remainder of the war.

(And first let us remind ourselves, because today's English academics - save only David Edgerton  - never do , that the civilian and military populations of the 1940s British Commonwealth cum Empire were larger than those of America.)

"Weft over Warp : Re-connecting the human fabric" (the OTHER Manhattan Project, 1939-1945)

So there is my book title + subtitle (and elevator pitch) all rolled up tight in as few words as possible.

And accompanied by a cover illustration.

Weft over Warp is ....

....the agape triumph of the other Manhattan Project over the atomic Manhattan Project ; the triumph of selfless sharing over selfish secrecy ; the triumph of the actual penicillin of veterans over the virtual penicillin of chickenhawk shirkers ...

PREFACE

Preface to "WEFT OVER WARP : the annual spirited telethon against Stone Heart disease" 

"WEFT OVER WARP" is the story of the other Manhattan Project, but in pointed contrast to the better known one , this time it is the story of the come-from-behind moral triumph of selfless sharing over selfish secrecy.

Enjoy learning how Manhattan's 'selfless penicillin project' acted as a badly needed weft to wartime's badly frayed human fabric , working to help re-connect all the war's stone-hearted warps...

Penicillin's "Third Man" : the synthetic triad of Fleming, Florey and MERCK ...

Three individuals' beliefs in the superiority of human chemists over natural chemists drove the fifteen year effort to delay the use of life-saving penicillin until it had become a patented man-made synthetic analogue : Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and George Merck.

Fleming and Florey got Nobel prizes for their unsuccessful efforts to delay the use of this wonderful lifesaver --- Merck had to be content with the cover of TIME.

Man-made penicillin was to be literally that : something manufactured by people of the male gender with no females nurturing penicillium flasks and no fungi to be charmed into giving off their natural penicillin.

Saving the Dying : the very chemical Moderns vs the very natural postmoderns

A patient is rapidly dying of an overwhelming massive bacterial infection in a big city hospital.

All the doctors (along with the patient and their family) have only two choices of what to inject (and only a few hours to do so) if they hope to save the patient.

Door A is a relatively new man-made chemical produced in a former paint factory.

It must be given in massive doses and it has frequent serious side effects and it only slows the rate of reproduction of the few bacteria that it does affect.

Door B is an all-natural anti-bacterial agent that has been around for millions of years,  needs only tiny amounts to be effective , is completely non-toxic and kills a wide variety of bacteria stone cold.

Which medicine would tend to be picked up and used based on the limited amount of information I have given ?

In 1942 ?

In 2012 ?

Famine : a break in the human weft

Even when lack of food, like James Joyce's famous snow, is "general over Ireland" it is never been (to date) general over all the world.

A caring world puts all its energy to rushing food from when it is plentiful or at least sufficient to where it is in very short supply, so that while many may be hungry, at least they are not starving.