How the US Government Helped Penicillin Production in the 1900s
Did you know that the scale-up of penicillin production happened during World War II?
How did they do it with countries waging war against each other? The answer: collaboration between scientists, government, and businesses.
Surprisingly, one of the main lessons children learn in kindergarten and elementary school helped save millions of lives from contagious bacterial diseases — working together to solve a problem. This kind of collaborative effort is not only necessary for fighting diseases, but for every aspect of science.
In my debut book, Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (and When They Don’t), I explore what happened when science and government worked together to solve problems and why we must continue to do so.
Below is an excerpt from my second chapter (formatted for Medium). Enjoy!
Collaboration between the government and scientists is vital if we are to mitigate the potential spread of a virus or bacteria that could kill millions of people. A perfect example of a time when science and government collaborated to do just that concerns penicillin. In 1940, Howard Florey was able to not only extract penicillin from a mold species, Penicillium notatum, but also administer it to mice, showing that mice could be protected against deadly bacteria.
However, with World War II on the forefront of everyone’s and every government’s mind, large-scale production of penicillin was a challenge for companies. Many companies were focused on the war effort, like manufacturing weapons and uniforms. In the US, the Defense Production Act was passed by Congress to give the president the power to mandate companies to switch to manufacturing products for the war effort.(1)
How exactly did the US Government help in the race to reduce the number of American lives lost to deadly bacteria? The government created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in 1941, with the purpose of ensuring enough attention was given to research on scientific — and more importantly, medical — problems that could be a national security issue.(2) Part of the OSRD was the Committee on Medical Research (CMR).(3)
The chair of that committee was Alfred Newton Richards, a friend of Howard Florey’s. Richards approached US companies with Florey’s penicillin because he trusted Florey’s expert opinion in the potential value of large-scale production of this compound. Richards advocated for Florey’s work and worked with both industry and the government agencies to create a collaborative research plan to mass produce penicillin.(4) That collaborative research plan played a critical role in the increase of penicillin production and the decrease in the cost.
The increase in production from 21 billion units in 1943 to over a trillion units in 1944, however, was due to the efforts by mainly American and British scientists, government agencies, and companies. It further increased to almost 7 trillion units in 1945. This ability to scale up also meant that the price per 100,000 units dropped significantly. In 1943, 100,000 units of penicillin, or approximately 60 mg, cost 20 dollars. By 1949, the cost was less than 10 cents.(5) That’s a 99.5 percent decrease in price over a five to six year period. That meant that more people could afford this lifesaving medicine.
Since the federal government believed in scientific research and development and was willing to invest in helping companies, universities, and individuals pursue scientific research and development, penicillin became an affordable lifesaving drug. It wasn’t meant for only military personnel or those who can afford high drug prices. It was meant for everyone.
With the number of vaccines and medicines that followed the discovery and large-scale production of penicillin, the overall health of people in the world has significantly improved. We now have vaccines for polio, various strains of the flu virus, mumps, and measles. New and improved vaccines are constantly being researched, developed, and tested every year. A great example of this is Ebola: in 2019, the FDA approved a vaccine for Ebola called Ervebo® that was developed by Merck. The company had performed clinical trials in New Guinea among endemic Ebola patients to make sure that the vaccine was effective and safe.(6)
Federal, state, regional, and local governments must all work together to fight infectious disease. When Ebola broke out again in 2014, President Obama trusted the judgment of scientists in controlling the pandemic and providing aid to countries that needed it, much like how Richards trusted Foley’s scientific judgment.(7) But what happens when the US government doesn’t trust the judgment of scientists? What happens when key players in the US government try to keep the public calm by pretending an outbreak couldn’t become worse? What happens when the very agencies in the government that ensure the safety of the public have their budgets slashed drastically?
What happens when a government fails to prepare for a pandemic?
Over the next weeks, I’ll be sharing excerpts and stories from my book, Necessary Symbiosis, in this article series. My book Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (and When They Don’t) is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PW4XP38. If you want to connect, find me on Twitter (@KarraVyshnavi), Instagram (@karravyshnavi, @necessarysymbiosis), and at www.vyshnavikarra.com.
(1) American Chemical Society, “Discovery and Development of Penicillin,” accessed April 2020.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Nate Smith, “Office of Scientific Research and Development Collections,” Inside Adams (blog), Library of Congress, October 11, 2019.
(4) American Chemical Society, “Discovery and Development of Penicillin,” accessed April 2020.
(5) Ibid.
(6) US Food and Drug Administration, “First FDA-approved vaccine for the prevention of Ebola virus disease, marking a critical milestone in public health preparedness and response,” December 19, 2019.
(7) Ed Yong, “The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?,” The Atlantic, accessed April 2020.
