Next October 2015 will see the 75th Anniversary of the first ever shot of Antibiotics - a historical event that took place at Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Centre on October 16th 1940.
It marks our very last chance to honour these medical pioneers while some of them are still alive.
Showing posts with label age of antibiotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label age of antibiotics. Show all posts
Jun 6, 2014
Is the male-dominated media biased as to which historical events get commemorated ?
The answer - unfortunately - is yes : male-dominated news coverage is still very gender-biased.
When it comes to commemorating violent versus beneficial historical events , it usually proves that male journalists are from Mars and the women from Venus.
And since most executive editors and executive producers are still men , guess which kind of historical events are splashed about and which get merely 'noted' ?
Wartime New York had two Manhattan Projects - one pioneering death-dealing atomic bombs and the other pioneering life-saving penicillin.
Both will be celebrating their seventy five anniversaries next year but it is quite likely that you will only see news stories about one of them.
In March 1940, Columbia University scientists Fermi and Szilard got $6,000 for building their atomic pile , on the authorization of President Roosevelt, an event usually viewed as the start of the atomic Manhattan project.
Call this the 'Little Boy' Manhattan project, after the name of the first bomb. (Would women name a bomb that was about to burn tens of thousands of children to death after a child ?)
The American national government has since spent far more than six trillion dollars on atomic research - a sum (by no coincidence) that is about the size of the entire publicly held debt of the America national government.
Try converting all that into new books for school libraries, extra staff for nursing homes and new places in daycare centers to imagine what $ six trillion dollars looks like when it is spent on something useful and productive.)
On October 16th 1940, penicillin's Manhattan project began, when the first needles of penicillin-the-antibiotic were given to patients Charles Aronson and Aaron Alston by Columbia University scientist Martin Henry Dawson, thus ushering in our Age of Antibiotics.
And by the way, Dr Dawson - who was combatting a painful terminal illness the whole time he was fighting for abundant cheap wartime penicillin for all humanity - never asked for any money from the government.
Call his effort the 'Baby Girl' Manhattan project .
(After the August 1943 story about how dying baby girl Patty Malone only received penicillin after intervention by Citizen Hearst's newspapers sparked a national protest by Doctor Mom that finally made penicillin world famous overnight, fifteen neglected years after it was first discovered.)
If male journalists continue to rule the roost - guess which event will be ballyhooed next year and which one will be ignored or only 'dutifully noted' ?
Mars may still domain the battlefields - but it does not have to go on dominating the newsroom and the TV in our living rooms .
A 1999 Newsday/Newseum survey of 35,000 American media consumers confirms that male readers think that the atomic bomb and the Little Boy story was the top news story of the 20th century.
But the women thought penicillin and the Baby Girl story was the top news story of the 20th century.
Since there are slightly more women than men , a prudent journalist should try and think of all their audience when they have two similar stories at the same time to report.
But unless New York's female media 'Act Up' , I think the events behind the 75th anniversary of the start of the life-saving Age of Antibiotics will be ignored --- once again....
When it comes to commemorating violent versus beneficial historical events , it usually proves that male journalists are from Mars and the women from Venus.
And since most executive editors and executive producers are still men , guess which kind of historical events are splashed about and which get merely 'noted' ?
Wartime New York had two Manhattan Projects - one pioneering death-dealing atomic bombs and the other pioneering life-saving penicillin.
Both will be celebrating their seventy five anniversaries next year but it is quite likely that you will only see news stories about one of them.
In March 1940, Columbia University scientists Fermi and Szilard got $6,000 for building their atomic pile , on the authorization of President Roosevelt, an event usually viewed as the start of the atomic Manhattan project.
Call this the 'Little Boy' Manhattan project, after the name of the first bomb. (Would women name a bomb that was about to burn tens of thousands of children to death after a child ?)
The American national government has since spent far more than six trillion dollars on atomic research - a sum (by no coincidence) that is about the size of the entire publicly held debt of the America national government.
Try converting all that into new books for school libraries, extra staff for nursing homes and new places in daycare centers to imagine what $ six trillion dollars looks like when it is spent on something useful and productive.)
On October 16th 1940, penicillin's Manhattan project began, when the first needles of penicillin-the-antibiotic were given to patients Charles Aronson and Aaron Alston by Columbia University scientist Martin Henry Dawson, thus ushering in our Age of Antibiotics.
And by the way, Dr Dawson - who was combatting a painful terminal illness the whole time he was fighting for abundant cheap wartime penicillin for all humanity - never asked for any money from the government.
Call his effort the 'Baby Girl' Manhattan project .
(After the August 1943 story about how dying baby girl Patty Malone only received penicillin after intervention by Citizen Hearst's newspapers sparked a national protest by Doctor Mom that finally made penicillin world famous overnight, fifteen neglected years after it was first discovered.)
If male journalists continue to rule the roost - guess which event will be ballyhooed next year and which one will be ignored or only 'dutifully noted' ?
Mars may still domain the battlefields - but it does not have to go on dominating the newsroom and the TV in our living rooms .
A 1999 Newsday/Newseum survey of 35,000 American media consumers confirms that male readers think that the atomic bomb and the Little Boy story was the top news story of the 20th century.
But the women thought penicillin and the Baby Girl story was the top news story of the 20th century.
Since there are slightly more women than men , a prudent journalist should try and think of all their audience when they have two similar stories at the same time to report.
But unless New York's female media 'Act Up' , I think the events behind the 75th anniversary of the start of the life-saving Age of Antibiotics will be ignored --- once again....
Agape's TRINITY : dawning the Age of Antibiotics , October 16th 1940 , New York City
To female members of the media reading this blog :
But who marked then - who will mark now (because its seventy fifth anniversary is next October 2015) - of the dawning of a more hope-filled and life-saving age, our current Age of Antibiotics ---- if not you ?
On October 16th 1940, registration day for America's first ever peacetime draft , all media eyes (along with the eyes of a good many diplomats from Germany and Britain) were on the 1a students of New York's Columbia University.
After all , three thousand of Columbia's students had famously voted to never again to go to war - would they now register , to fight a new possible war ?
No eyes were on another part of the near-deserted Columbia campus (all classes were cancelled to ease the registration process) as a new class of medication was about to undergo its first critical (systemic/internal) test on an actual human patient.
Columbia's medical school dean knew of this crucial test but deliberately chose not to release a press release about it - so how could any media have reported upon it ?
But would they have anyway ?
Because as America girded up for a possible war, 1A young men and their medical conditions - war medicine - was the new priority.
Lowest of the lowest priorities - for news media and medical researchers alike - was 4F medicine - social medicine.
For that was the news that had greeted all of Columbia's medical researchers as they returned to work in the Fall of 1940.
Even lower still in priority were any pioneering efforts to help the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
People like the young men with weakened heart valve conditions likely to die at some point of invariably fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis , because they were judged unfit not just for military life but even for work in the crucial war industries.
This instrumentalist view of humanity : viewing the worth of your fellow human being by only what they can contribute to the war effort - was really done best by Hitler and Stalin.
But America was willing to give it the old school try - starting with the SBE sufferers.
However - and thankfully for all humanity - one Columbia medical professor, Dr Martin Henry Dawson , felt quite differently.
He began his own Manhattan Project - Agape penicillin - on that October morning.
A military hero of WWI, he nevertheless felt that one of the best ways to combat Hitler was morally - by showing in practise how much we opposed the Nazis' instrumentalist view of humanity.
So on October 16th 1940, he felt America should show it cared at least as much about its unfit 4F youth as it did about their fit 1A companions.
A Jew, Charles Aronson , firstly, and then a black man , Aaron Alston - in 1940 America they were practically 4F simply by ethnicity alone - were the two patients who got the first ever needles of penicillin-the-antibiotic that day.
Aaron eventually died but amazing, Charles survived : a hopeful start to the new Age of Antibiotics.
So on October 16th 2015, seventy years later, will the New York media mark the start of the American peacetime draft registration - still very much a part of American life ?
Or will the New York media mark the start of the Age of Antibiotics , still very much part of everyone's life around the world ?
Or hopefully both - seeing how intimately the two events were intertwined, way back in October 1940 .
But I doubt - if left to the men alone - it'll ever happen.
A 1999 Newsday-Newseum survey of 35,000 American men and women revealed a perhaps not so surprising difference of opinion as to the top news story of the 20th century.
The men thought it was the death-dealing Manhattan Project and its atomic bomb.
But the women thought it was the life-saving Manhattan Project and its wartime vision of cheap abundant penicillin for all humanity.
So women, particularly if you work in the media - its time to step up to the plate and make sure that , this time , the dawn of the Age of Antibiotics gets its due ...
Aug 21, 2013
the Good , as well as the Bad , gets intensified under the pressures of wartime
In her time - during and after WWI - nurse Edith Cavell was as famous as Oscar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and all the other WWII "Righteous Among the Nations" combined.
She devoted her life to nursing, mostly in Belgium though she was British herself, and didn't see why WWI should interrupt her practise of trying to save all patients, regardless of whether they were German, Belgian or Allied.
She was shoot however , by a German firing squad, for the war crime of helping Allied soldiers to escape the brutal German occupation forces enslaving Belgium.
Britain has claimed it had gone to war precisely to defend the right of neutral little Belgium not to be over run and then brutally enslaved by her bigger neighbours.
But many in her political and military elite thought it was right and just for the Germans to shoot her - they would have done the same - in fact did the same to Mata Hari.
World public opinion decidedly thought otherwise and her death became a big factor in turning neutral America to the Allied cause and for inspiring tens of thousands of youth in all the Allied countries to immediately join up as medical workers or soldiers.
News of her execution hit North American newspaper readers October 16th 1915.
It immediately inspired Martin Henry Dawson to become a medical orderly oversea.
He subsequently changed his life career plans and became a doctor.
On October 16th 1940, exactly 25 years later to the day he entered the medical world, Dawson ushered in one of those sort of earth-shaking events that only happens once every few centuries.
He gave two dying young men some of that elixir of life, natural penicillin, and so began our present Age of Antibiotics.
Neither man was Belgian, but for Dawson the principal was still the same : the small were being crushed beneath the interests of the big and he was as determined to fight that outrage as hard in WWII as he had in WWI.
These two men were being neglected by a medical community and drug company industry that had become focused on profitably war medicine for the 1As of the world , not on 'socialistic' social medicine to aid the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Dawson saw that solely a military effort to defeat the Nazis or the Huns was never going to be enough, not if there was no moral battle behind it.
Sinking to the level of the Prussian military mindset, in WWI London or in WWII New York he saw was no way to win the hearts and minds of neutral nations - or even for retaining the loyalty of one's own citizens.
So, no Dawson did not go forth into battle on behalf of Mars in this second world war as he had eventually in the first.
He stayed home and treated only people too '4F' to ever be useful for military duty or even for the fast pace and long hours of munitions factory work.
He worked on the Venus side of Manhattan exclusively and his direct war impact was limited to filling the hearts of people all over the world with renewed hope.
But i believe that his efforts saved far more lives ,and probably won the war quicker, than The Bomb ever did.....
She devoted her life to nursing, mostly in Belgium though she was British herself, and didn't see why WWI should interrupt her practise of trying to save all patients, regardless of whether they were German, Belgian or Allied.
She was shoot however , by a German firing squad, for the war crime of helping Allied soldiers to escape the brutal German occupation forces enslaving Belgium.
Britain has claimed it had gone to war precisely to defend the right of neutral little Belgium not to be over run and then brutally enslaved by her bigger neighbours.
But many in her political and military elite thought it was right and just for the Germans to shoot her - they would have done the same - in fact did the same to Mata Hari.
World public opinion decidedly thought otherwise and her death became a big factor in turning neutral America to the Allied cause and for inspiring tens of thousands of youth in all the Allied countries to immediately join up as medical workers or soldiers.
News of her execution hit North American newspaper readers October 16th 1915.
It immediately inspired Martin Henry Dawson to become a medical orderly oversea.
He subsequently changed his life career plans and became a doctor.
On October 16th 1940, exactly 25 years later to the day he entered the medical world, Dawson ushered in one of those sort of earth-shaking events that only happens once every few centuries.
He gave two dying young men some of that elixir of life, natural penicillin, and so began our present Age of Antibiotics.
Neither man was Belgian, but for Dawson the principal was still the same : the small were being crushed beneath the interests of the big and he was as determined to fight that outrage as hard in WWII as he had in WWI.
These two men were being neglected by a medical community and drug company industry that had become focused on profitably war medicine for the 1As of the world , not on 'socialistic' social medicine to aid the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Dawson saw that solely a military effort to defeat the Nazis or the Huns was never going to be enough, not if there was no moral battle behind it.
Sinking to the level of the Prussian military mindset, in WWI London or in WWII New York he saw was no way to win the hearts and minds of neutral nations - or even for retaining the loyalty of one's own citizens.
So, no Dawson did not go forth into battle on behalf of Mars in this second world war as he had eventually in the first.
He stayed home and treated only people too '4F' to ever be useful for military duty or even for the fast pace and long hours of munitions factory work.
He worked on the Venus side of Manhattan exclusively and his direct war impact was limited to filling the hearts of people all over the world with renewed hope.
But i believe that his efforts saved far more lives ,and probably won the war quicker, than The Bomb ever did.....
Feb 7, 2013
Dies Mirabilis : October 16th 1940 : the first ever peacetime 1A Draft and the first ever 4F penicillin needle
Oh, to be there , just to see the Janus-like faces of Columbia University's campus on dies mirabilis, October 16th 1940.
Over in one corner, led by blustery University President Butler himself, most of the campus was busily and very publicly (cue the news reel cameras) engaged in the nation's first ever peacetime draft registration process : busy triaging the best 1A youth away from the 4F rejects.
Over in another corner of the campus, a tiny band of four individuals was just as busily triaging away in the opposition direction.
Led by two world war one frontline military veterans, they had deliberately - almost provocatively - picked this, of all sacred days in WASPish America's calendar - to usher in the Age of Antibiotics.
Their choice of the first ever patients was equally provocative, not merely that one was Black and the other one was Jewish, but because both were SBEs : the 4Fs of the 4Fs, in Draft Registration terms.
Both were dying from the disease rated as about "one hundred and ten" on a priority list running from one to one hundred on diseases of military priority.
Later on (by 1943), Columbia's campus again resumed a Janus-like cast, as one part beavered away at The Bomb, determined to se it at working ,killing, before peace broke out , while in another part of the campus, our tiny team was at work trying to see penicillin in high production, before death and pestilence broke out in the occupied lands.
But I like to think we will never again see such a contrasting day in such a small place, as we did on October 16th 1940 at Columbia University ....
Over in one corner, led by blustery University President Butler himself, most of the campus was busily and very publicly (cue the news reel cameras) engaged in the nation's first ever peacetime draft registration process : busy triaging the best 1A youth away from the 4F rejects.
Over in another corner of the campus, a tiny band of four individuals was just as busily triaging away in the opposition direction.
Led by two world war one frontline military veterans, they had deliberately - almost provocatively - picked this, of all sacred days in WASPish America's calendar - to usher in the Age of Antibiotics.
Their choice of the first ever patients was equally provocative, not merely that one was Black and the other one was Jewish, but because both were SBEs : the 4Fs of the 4Fs, in Draft Registration terms.
Both were dying from the disease rated as about "one hundred and ten" on a priority list running from one to one hundred on diseases of military priority.
Later on (by 1943), Columbia's campus again resumed a Janus-like cast, as one part beavered away at The Bomb, determined to se it at working ,killing, before peace broke out , while in another part of the campus, our tiny team was at work trying to see penicillin in high production, before death and pestilence broke out in the occupied lands.
But I like to think we will never again see such a contrasting day in such a small place, as we did on October 16th 1940 at Columbia University ....
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