Sometimes people ask me if I think Henry Dawson should have gotten a Nobel Prize for his successful pushing of the wartime mass production of natural penicillin.
As is well known , the Nobel Prize went instead to Howard Florey (and Ernst Chain and Alexander Fleming) despite the abject failure of their alternative wartime synthetic penicillin effort.
(But because so many of Stockholm's Nobel choices have been equally flawed, you can at least praise them for consistency.)
I understand Dawson to be a modest and humble man and I believe he would have regarded his saving of lives as reward enough.
Besides, I explain, Britain really needed a consolation prize (the Nobel) to cheer it up in late 1945.
Showing posts with label pax americana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pax americana. Show all posts
Feb 19, 2013
"Pax Penicillia" : how Churchill's Britain won the war and lost the peace
The decision by Winston Churchill's (Tory) Minister of Supply (MoS) not to divert the money for one additional Lancaster squadron, used to bomb civilians in Europe, towards providing enough penicillin for British (and European) civilians resulted in Churchill's Tories winning the war for Britain --- but at the cost of losing the peace.
By contrast, when the (left-leaning) War Production Board (WPB) decided to greatly up the production level of American penicillin from the miserably niggardly amounts proposed by the (right-leaning) OSRD , the resulting surplus provided State Department diplomats with the amazing opportunity to wrestle Victory's moral authority from Britain (which claimed - somewhat incorrectly - to have stood alone against Hitler) to the tardy latecomers Americans.
Forget Chewing Gum and Coca Cola, or even the A-Bomb , the single best means for American diplomats to win friends for America was by providing the gift of life to people dying of sulfa-resistant infections all over the world.
And thus, American "Pax Penicillia" replaced the "Pax Britannica"...
By contrast, when the (left-leaning) War Production Board (WPB) decided to greatly up the production level of American penicillin from the miserably niggardly amounts proposed by the (right-leaning) OSRD , the resulting surplus provided State Department diplomats with the amazing opportunity to wrestle Victory's moral authority from Britain (which claimed - somewhat incorrectly - to have stood alone against Hitler) to the tardy latecomers Americans.
Forget Chewing Gum and Coca Cola, or even the A-Bomb , the single best means for American diplomats to win friends for America was by providing the gift of life to people dying of sulfa-resistant infections all over the world.
And thus, American "Pax Penicillia" replaced the "Pax Britannica"...
Dec 27, 2012
Very last files UK National Archives plans to digitalize : FO 370/926, futile appeals from abroad for British penicillin
The very last files that the UK National Archives plans to digitalize and put on line won't be the ultra-secret Ultra files . Trust me : Ultra was a success.
No the very last files, if ever, to be digitalized and put on line will be the series FO (Foreign Office) 370/926 : requests from aboard , 1944-1945, for that wonderful British invention , penicillin.
That's because what should have been the greatest success for the UK in WWII turned out to be their worst total balls-up disaster.
The British didn't have any penicillin : not really enough for their own troops and civilians, let alone to address distressing appeals coming from the dying all over the world.
What should have been a signal triumph as Britons freely gave to the word the greatest medical boon it had ever known - would ever know - instead became an opportunity for America to practise "penicillin diplomacy" and replace Pax Britannia with Pax Americana.
The British Empire actually fell, not in early 1942 with "The Fall of Singapore" , but in early 1944, with "The Penicillin Shortfall Crisis".
The cause of the failure was the usual one : leaving policy in the hands of scientists, instead of the politicians.
Stupid and venal as the politicians often are, they know a political minefield when they see one - but by the time they saw this one, it was just too late.
Just as the families overseas were forced to bury their dead when the British failed to help - so too, the PRO and UK archivists will bury these embarrassing files : but good....
No the very last files, if ever, to be digitalized and put on line will be the series FO (Foreign Office) 370/926 : requests from aboard , 1944-1945, for that wonderful British invention , penicillin.
That's because what should have been the greatest success for the UK in WWII turned out to be their worst total balls-up disaster.
The British didn't have any penicillin : not really enough for their own troops and civilians, let alone to address distressing appeals coming from the dying all over the world.
What should have been a signal triumph as Britons freely gave to the word the greatest medical boon it had ever known - would ever know - instead became an opportunity for America to practise "penicillin diplomacy" and replace Pax Britannia with Pax Americana.
The British Empire actually fell, not in early 1942 with "The Fall of Singapore" , but in early 1944, with "The Penicillin Shortfall Crisis".
The cause of the failure was the usual one : leaving policy in the hands of scientists, instead of the politicians.
Stupid and venal as the politicians often are, they know a political minefield when they see one - but by the time they saw this one, it was just too late.
Just as the families overseas were forced to bury their dead when the British failed to help - so too, the PRO and UK archivists will bury these embarrassing files : but good....
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