Monday, February 1, 2016

Penicillin, despite the Beltway


With apologies to Arthur Hailey and the actor later to play Scottie on Star Trek...



At first and second glance, a Canadian North Star passenger plane landing safely isn't very much of a news story.


Not unless you can reveal that there actually was a life or death situation in the cockpit for the last half hour of the flight and only an unsung hero saved the day, when most of the passengers and all the flight crew became deathly ill from eating a shared bad seafood dinner.

Similarly, the 'happy ending' nature of WWII's just-in-time mass produced penicillin is over seventy years old, is universally known and is very much taken for granted.

 So I really have my work cut out for me to prove that it almost didn't happen, but for the heroic work of an unsung few overcoming resistance from the very powerful wartime 'Beltways' of Washington and London...

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