The untold scandal of the Anglo-American pharmaceuticals "CODE SLOWING" natural penicillin production in the crucial months before D-Day
Howard Florey seems to have contacted every major pharmaceutical firm and governmental scientific organization in the UK , Canada and America but clicked with only a very few.
Martin Henry Dawson's project was known by most of the same organizations - but he clicked with even fewer.
But both men eventually found institutional supporters of the same like mind as themselves - so it probably didn't matter how many rejected them.
Both men were relatively inflexible as to their ultimate objectives.
Florey sought a perfect chemical synthetic solution, no matter how long it took and was unwilling to settle for anything less .
By contrast, Dawson wanted any sort of solution to the penicillin supply issue - as long as it happened now ! - and that it provided an abundance of inexpensive wartime penicillin.
Florey found similarly chemically minded executives at Merck, ICI and in A. N. Richards the head of the medical division of the American OSRD (where the ultimate boss, Vannevar Bush was notorious for never ever hiring biologists.)
Dawson found a kindred soul in John L Smith of Pfizer (albeit prodded by his wife Mae) who decided to risk all by going the all-natural route when the industry consensus was to "Code Slow" natural penicillin production until perfect synthetic penicillin was invented.
And like Dawson, Smith's vision was for lots and lots and lots of penicillin - now !
Suddenly - a crucial month before D-Day - the race between the two competing visions was all over.
Not a drop of synth pen in the pipeline to Kansas City Kansas and then onto the waiting military hospital units in the south of England - instead tens of billions of units of natural penicillin were in that pipeline , almost all from Pfizer.
Florey stormed and the dying Dawson permitted himself a rare - wall-to-wall - grin .....
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