Joe and Willie , PBI , not Captain America or Bomber Command.
Down in dirt , muddling through , boots on the ground .
When hyper-modern technology fails : send in the shovels ...
Showing posts with label un-super heroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label un-super heroes. Show all posts
Monday, December 8, 2014
Friday, December 5, 2014
Super Heroes started WWII -- but only un-superheroes could end it ...
It flatters us greatly to focus upon WWII as simply a war between good (us) and evil (them).
This, rather than accurately/painfully contrasting the high expectations of all sides in September 1939 (and many other such key dates throughout the six year conflict) with the depressing reality of September 1945.
For the swift and powerful English and German bomber fleets (or swift and powerful Russian and German tank armies) (or swift and powerful Japanese and American carrier task forces) did not 'always get through' .
No major campaign - and the war itself - ever ended in a breakthrough after a few swift painless weeks, as promised.
Super Hero militaries and their civilian fellow travellers certainly talked a lot during WWII--- but they did not walk.
Instead civilians in bomb shelters, little Grumman fighter planes, muddy infantrymen and tiny corvette navies plodded their way to a sad, slow victory : in a truly un-superheroic fashion
This, rather than accurately/painfully contrasting the high expectations of all sides in September 1939 (and many other such key dates throughout the six year conflict) with the depressing reality of September 1945.
For the swift and powerful English and German bomber fleets (or swift and powerful Russian and German tank armies) (or swift and powerful Japanese and American carrier task forces) did not 'always get through' .
No major campaign - and the war itself - ever ended in a breakthrough after a few swift painless weeks, as promised.
Super Hero militaries and their civilian fellow travellers certainly talked a lot during WWII--- but they did not walk.
Instead civilians in bomb shelters, little Grumman fighter planes, muddy infantrymen and tiny corvette navies plodded their way to a sad, slow victory : in a truly un-superheroic fashion
Thursday, September 18, 2014
I'm a thinkin' : maybe its the Gotham EIGHT ?
I've always regarded the number of Gotham's 'unfits' who rescued natural lifesaving penicillin and set it free to do good as being just seven in number but now I am thinking that I was wrong.
First, the two unfit clinicians, Dr Henry Dawson and his assistant Dr Thomas Hunter.
Then three other unfits who greatly assisted them (Dawson's wife Marjorie Granger Dawson, his friend and ex-patient Floyd Odlum , and his ex-patient Dr Dante Colitti).
Finally, the two unfit patients, Charles Aronson and Ms H. H. , whose continued survival under Dawson's pioneering treatment, despite repeated setbacks, allowed the program time to finally succeed in spades.
But I now realize that these seven unfits didn't need to have gotten involved in the first place.
Not if the eighth Gotham 'unfit' , the penicillium notatum. had been accepted on its own considerable merits instead of being dismissed on sight as too small, too simple, too weak and too too disgusting.
But the God of the Modern Era (from the 1870s to the 1960s) was always on the side of the biggest battalions and the Moderns saw most of the world as being on the unworthy-of-life side of the fit/unfit question.
But they were dead wrong.
Because in fact the greatest medical blessing this world has ever seen was brought to us by a handful of unfit doctors serving unfit patients with unfit medicine.
Their unexpected victory in 1945 did not spell the immediate end of the Modern Era and the immediate rise of our present post-Modern Era.
But it certainly spelt the beginning of that end...
First, the two unfit clinicians, Dr Henry Dawson and his assistant Dr Thomas Hunter.
Then three other unfits who greatly assisted them (Dawson's wife Marjorie Granger Dawson, his friend and ex-patient Floyd Odlum , and his ex-patient Dr Dante Colitti).
Finally, the two unfit patients, Charles Aronson and Ms H. H. , whose continued survival under Dawson's pioneering treatment, despite repeated setbacks, allowed the program time to finally succeed in spades.
But I now realize that these seven unfits didn't need to have gotten involved in the first place.
Not if the eighth Gotham 'unfit' , the penicillium notatum. had been accepted on its own considerable merits instead of being dismissed on sight as too small, too simple, too weak and too too disgusting.
But the God of the Modern Era (from the 1870s to the 1960s) was always on the side of the biggest battalions and the Moderns saw most of the world as being on the unworthy-of-life side of the fit/unfit question.
But they were dead wrong.
Because in fact the greatest medical blessing this world has ever seen was brought to us by a handful of unfit doctors serving unfit patients with unfit medicine.
Their unexpected victory in 1945 did not spell the immediate end of the Modern Era and the immediate rise of our present post-Modern Era.
But it certainly spelt the beginning of that end...
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Rumours of death of wartime penicillins : "Greatly Exaggerated"
Seventy five years on , the wartime penicillins are just dusty relics , found only in some museum of medical curios, right ?
(You been talking to your GP again ?)
It is simply amazing how many family doctors dismiss wartime penicillins and say 'we physicians are all into the latest beta lactams today' .
Viagra and Lipitor are some of the best known and best selling drugs of all time.
So how much of them are produced annually ?
Two Hundred and fifty metric tons each - very impressive numbers in the world of drug production.
So how much of the old wartime penicillins ( Penicillins G , V and N) are still produced annually ?
How about fifty thousand tonnes (!!!!)
So much so, and at such cheap prices ,that some statistic indices rate them as commodity chemicals like caustic soda and ethyl alcohol - the cheap bulk raw materials intended for further chemical or biological processing.
Because that is exactly what the wartime penicillin are produced in such huge amounts for - to be worked up into the varied anti-bacterial drugs we call the modern beta lactams.
The old geezers are still the foundation beneath the largest component of the anti-bacterial armoury (and one of the largest components of overall acute care medications).
Seventy five years on , the best of chemistry and microbiology has still not bettered how cheaply and efficiently the tiny penicillium chrysogenum eat cheap farm wastes and turn them into valued lifesavers.
Alexander Fleming was dead wrong, Howard Florey was dead wrong, almost every WWII era doctor, scientist and science journalist was dead wrong.
The wartime chemists did not quickly and decisively eclipse these tiny un-super heroes of the era of antibiotics .
And they still haven't done so, even today...
(You been talking to your GP again ?)
It is simply amazing how many family doctors dismiss wartime penicillins and say 'we physicians are all into the latest beta lactams today' .
Time for some FACTS, Doc :
Viagra and Lipitor are some of the best known and best selling drugs of all time.
So how much of them are produced annually ?
Two Hundred and fifty metric tons each - very impressive numbers in the world of drug production.
So how much of the old wartime penicillins ( Penicillins G , V and N) are still produced annually ?
How about fifty thousand tonnes (!!!!)
So much so, and at such cheap prices ,that some statistic indices rate them as commodity chemicals like caustic soda and ethyl alcohol - the cheap bulk raw materials intended for further chemical or biological processing.
Because that is exactly what the wartime penicillin are produced in such huge amounts for - to be worked up into the varied anti-bacterial drugs we call the modern beta lactams.
The old geezers are still the foundation beneath the largest component of the anti-bacterial armoury (and one of the largest components of overall acute care medications).
Seventy five years on , the best of chemistry and microbiology has still not bettered how cheaply and efficiently the tiny penicillium chrysogenum eat cheap farm wastes and turn them into valued lifesavers.
Alexander Fleming was dead wrong, Howard Florey was dead wrong, almost every WWII era doctor, scientist and science journalist was dead wrong.
The wartime chemists did not quickly and decisively eclipse these tiny un-super heroes of the era of antibiotics .
And they still haven't done so, even today...
Friday, September 5, 2014
How a handful of Gotham unfits rescued the unbroken bronco of modern medicine (un-patentable natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all) and set it free to do good
When your life hangs in the balance because of bacterial infection and all else has failed, hospitals reach for Plan G - a needleful of Penicillin G - 87 years old and still our most potent , safest and yet by far the cheapest lifesaver.
Big Pharma practically giving away its most potent and yet safest lifesaver - that hardly sounds like the Big Pharma you and I know --- and hate !
Penicillin still remains un-patentable - still remains made naturally by tiny bugs in a bottle , not by human chemists in a factory.
It still finds its main use as an internal lifesaver not as an external antiseptic for cuts and scrapes.
And it still is a widely available lifesaver - regardless of skin color or lack of income .
Partly because it is cheap because it is un-patentable so no one firm or nation can control its production but mostly because making it available for all is a longstanding tradition since the last year of WWII.
But if Alexander Fleming , that Presbyterian-raised Scot from Old Scotland had had his will, none of this good news would have happened.
Thankfully, another Presbyterian-raised Scot , but this time from New Scotland (Henry Dawson), was there to thwart his will ...
Big Pharma practically giving away its most potent and yet safest lifesaver - that hardly sounds like the Big Pharma you and I know --- and hate !
Penicillin still remains un-patentable - still remains made naturally by tiny bugs in a bottle , not by human chemists in a factory.
It still finds its main use as an internal lifesaver not as an external antiseptic for cuts and scrapes.
And it still is a widely available lifesaver - regardless of skin color or lack of income .
Partly because it is cheap because it is un-patentable so no one firm or nation can control its production but mostly because making it available for all is a longstanding tradition since the last year of WWII.
But if Alexander Fleming , that Presbyterian-raised Scot from Old Scotland had had his will, none of this good news would have happened.
Thankfully, another Presbyterian-raised Scot , but this time from New Scotland (Henry Dawson), was there to thwart his will ...
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
The Big Apple's (green) un-super heroes
The biggest horse races offer the biggest prize money so every jockey naturally wants to win big in the biggest of Big Apples - New York City.
Nothing living and green is implied in the term --- nothing beyond the green colour of cold hard cash.
Its ironic then, isn't , that wartime's penicillium green grew best in The Big Apple's (The Green Apple's ?) concrete jungle.
Not in leafy green Oxford University.
Brewed up in Gotham by Henry Dawson's small group of unfits, misfits and rebels - fermenting up a revolution in how the world of medicine now views the natural world....
Nothing living and green is implied in the term --- nothing beyond the green colour of cold hard cash.
Its ironic then, isn't , that wartime's penicillium green grew best in The Big Apple's (The Green Apple's ?) concrete jungle.
Not in leafy green Oxford University.
Brewed up in Gotham by Henry Dawson's small group of unfits, misfits and rebels - fermenting up a revolution in how the world of medicine now views the natural world....
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Gotham's wartime unfits rescued natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all
Wartime Gotham's concrete jungle was crawling with comic book Super Heroes and their opponents.
After all ,most of today's best known super heroes were created during the war years.
These Super Heroes did their stuff on some very mean streets that also managed to look a whole lot like the actual streets of Manhattan , circa 1940.
(And more than seventy five years later, they still do !)
I find it hard to feel totally upbeat about Super Heroes - they hold too many overtones of 1940 Hitler's Ubermensch to make me very comfortable.
I can't accept that people who aren't physically extraordinary - or indeed not even ordinarily physical fit - can't make perfectly good heroes.
In fact, I'd argue their task of heroism is much harder to achieve .
because they are not blessed with either Superman's gift of super-special physical powers or Batman's extraordinary-honed human skills (and wealth).
In that same concrete jungle that was 1940 Gotham for example ,Dr Henry Dawson's team of unfits could hardly muster a half dozen ordinarily full functioning limbs between them.
But who can say than anything morally greater ever came out of WWII's bad news war than their unlikely success in rescuing natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all from the meanness of the Allied medical-scientific establishment?
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