Wartime penicillin (discovered in 1928) actually had two miracles.
The first miracle was how the Allies managed to keep new of penicillin's wondrous lifesaving abilities from their own wartime public for so long.
The other miracle was that the Allies managed to produce at least some penicillin - despite their own best efforts - before the war's end.
Bruce Springsteen reminds us that blind faith in our leaders - be they political , military or medical - can get us all killed.
And this was as true during WWII as it still is today.
There are times when the only moral thing to do - the only patriotic thing to do - even during a Total War - is to Act Up.
And because seven cripples had the courage to Act Up over the immoral weaponization of wartime penicillin, the whole world got cheap abundant non-patented penicillin....
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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