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 ...



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