of samples of Penicillium mold from around the world. Although the
Oxford team was an assemblage of masterminds, none were mycologists
(fungus scientists). The challenge of identifying the most potent strain of
Penicillium and the most efficient means of production of penicillin was
entirely in the wheelhouse of the Peoria USDA lab, and in a matter of
months, production of penicillin had improved one thousand fold. After
rounds of testing, a strain of Penicillium was isolated that became the
“ancestral source for virtually all of the world’s penicillin,”^14 originating
from a cantaloupe from a local Peoria market.^15
The USDA lab succeeded in discovering an ideal strain of Penicillium
and also in improving fermentation. They prevailed over the “better seed,
better soil, better cultivation and harvesting”^16 contest—and it would fall
upon the pharmaceutical companies in the United States and England to
utilize those techniques to meet the demand. To entice drug companies to
participate in the penicillin production challenge, the US government
developed an unprecedented system of financial support and patent
protection for the burgeoning corporations that established firm
foundation to their explosive growth in the immediate postwar period. The
wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and
Committee on Medical Research (CMR) undertook a comprehensive
program to confront the medical problems of the war, in essence,
weaponizing American science against the Axis powers. In the 1950s, a
dizzying confluence of government funding, research sophistication, new
hospital construction, and surgical know-how launched the modern
medicine revolution; all of these developments can, in part, be blamed on
penicillin’s mandated industrial cultivation.
The American production of penicillin expanded exponentially from
1942 to 1945, but oddly, German development of antibiotics was virtually
nonexistent. Decades before, Lister’s carbolic acid treatment of wounds
(and the German adoption of that method) had changed the balance of
power in the Franco-Prussian War. German soldiers survived their battle
wounds; French soldiers didn’t. However, as war raged on during World
War II, tens of thousands of German soldiers died from septic wounds,
while American manufacturing ramped up penicillin production in
preparation for D-Day.
Why did the Germans spend so little time and money on antibiotic
development? Were they not the greatest chemists in the world?