Put a bunch of scientists in a room and get them to bet on a race between a tortoise and a hare and they'll plunk their money on the rabbit every time.
That is one big reason why 'we almost lost DDT and penicillin' , to paraphrase a famous wartime ad from the Ayer agency : a bactericide or insecticide that was slow but steady has no great appeal to your average alpha male scientist......
On Oct 16th 1940, Gotham's concrete jungle rescued the NATURAL penicillin stone its (British) builders had rejected and gave the world's first antibiotic shot. Alexander Fleming's ARTIFICIAL penicillin (ironically from leafy green Oxford !) won a Nobel but failed morally and technically. Instead Manhattan Natural radiated hope to a world tired, huddled and wretched. On its 75th, let's remind terrorist Ramzi Yousef about a Manhattan project that saved far more lives than the A-Bomb ever killed.
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