Wow ! Quite a lot for Big Science (particularly chemists and synthetic scientists) to celebrate in 1945.
Set against that , a bit of a minor and undoubtedly temporary disappointment.
For there was (also in 1945) the totally unexpected failure by a thousand of the smartest guys in the room - nay the entire universe - to quickly synthesize the simple small molecule made by some small and extremely simple beings : penicillin.
Flash forward Gordon to 2015.
Chemistry (what's left of it) is now Green , a johnny-come-lately attempt to regain ground lost to biology and penicillin-mediated microbiology in particular.
And yes penicillin is still unpatented, still cheap and abundant, still only created by those extremely simple minded little slime cretins.
Synthetic is now passe , un-cool, like white bread to whole grain bread , and natural is the thing.
We're almost all post-moderns now (angry old white protestant male deniers of climate change, Auschwitz and post-modernity aside.)
For once Big Modern Synthetic Science was given its head (aka WWII) , a lot of us apparently didn't like what we saw.
That is why I find 1945's climatic battle between modern synthetic penicillin and postmodern natural penicillin so darn fascinating.
For the long, broad and convoluted battle between modernity and postmodernity is a story only a seasoned academic could love or fully understand.
But the tale of 1945 penicillin is a tight page turner that both laity and ivory tower can really enjoy...
Showing posts with label naplam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label naplam. Show all posts
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Manhattan Indie PEN : penicillin misfits, unfits & rebels fermenting a revolution and renewing hope to a world tired, huddled and wretched
Today, words and phrases like "all-natural", "green" , "locally grown" and "no added chemicals" are such advertising cliches that it hard to believe there was a time , up to the end of WWII, when such phrases were totally anathema.
Back in that era , advertising cliches were more likely to invoke being chemically pure and to see being 100% synthetic , plastic and man-made as virtues to seek out.
But after Hiroshima , Auschwitz , Napalm and other WWII 'man-made wonders', these concepts very gradually fell out of vogue.
But at the beginning of WWII , they dominated thought in areas ordinarily seen as lying well beyond and above the thought behind popular magazine ads.
Areas such as the science of penicillin.
At a time - before as well as during the war - when only penicillin could save lives from some diseases , it seems incredible that medical researchers' aesthetic tastes could forestall the use of 'safe enough' indie PEN (crude penicillin juice) but it did - for 15 long, life-wasting years.
Before they'd be seen in public giving penicillin to the dying with no other alternative, most doctors wanted penicillin to be as pure as any chemical synthetic, as colorless and tasteless, and about as stable as any loaf of stabilizer-laced white bread could ever hope to be.
They'd rather inject almost any new manmade chemical into a human bloodstream before they would inject the life-saving juice from some bog-ordinary basement slime.
No slime from the basement of life on earth could possibly be better at saving lives than the PhD educated minds from the best Anglo Saxon universities in the land.
It was all a bit like letting your daughter date a Jew or a Negro.
Not done.
Today of course it is all totally different.
If people still don't want their daughters dating Jews or blacks, they have become smart enough not to say so in public.
And student numbers in chemistry degree programs have never been lower while biotechnology (with fermentation usually at the heart of its successes) is where all the graduates and jobs are at.
Manhattan Indie PEN - once only home to misfits, unfits and rebels has brewed up an intellectual storm so successfully that they have become the norm - with yesterday's rebels as today's bosses.....
Back in that era , advertising cliches were more likely to invoke being chemically pure and to see being 100% synthetic , plastic and man-made as virtues to seek out.
But after Hiroshima , Auschwitz , Napalm and other WWII 'man-made wonders', these concepts very gradually fell out of vogue.
But at the beginning of WWII , they dominated thought in areas ordinarily seen as lying well beyond and above the thought behind popular magazine ads.
Areas such as the science of penicillin.
At a time - before as well as during the war - when only penicillin could save lives from some diseases , it seems incredible that medical researchers' aesthetic tastes could forestall the use of 'safe enough' indie PEN (crude penicillin juice) but it did - for 15 long, life-wasting years.
Before they'd be seen in public giving penicillin to the dying with no other alternative, most doctors wanted penicillin to be as pure as any chemical synthetic, as colorless and tasteless, and about as stable as any loaf of stabilizer-laced white bread could ever hope to be.
They'd rather inject almost any new manmade chemical into a human bloodstream before they would inject the life-saving juice from some bog-ordinary basement slime.
No slime from the basement of life on earth could possibly be better at saving lives than the PhD educated minds from the best Anglo Saxon universities in the land.
It was all a bit like letting your daughter date a Jew or a Negro.
Not done.
Today of course it is all totally different.
If people still don't want their daughters dating Jews or blacks, they have become smart enough not to say so in public.
And student numbers in chemistry degree programs have never been lower while biotechnology (with fermentation usually at the heart of its successes) is where all the graduates and jobs are at.
Manhattan Indie PEN
Manhattan Indie PEN - once only home to misfits, unfits and rebels has brewed up an intellectual storm so successfully that they have become the norm - with yesterday's rebels as today's bosses.....
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