The penicillin war: India's journey from self-sufficiency to dependence on China
Sir Alexander Fleming returned to his lab in St. Mary’s Hospital in London, a big surprise was waiting. He found a blue-green mould growing in one of the petri dishes. Intrigued, his mind went probing on the cause of contamination. Soon Fleming realised he had stumbled upon a discovery that would be hailed as one of the world’s biggest medical breakthroughs. By sheer serendipity, Fleming found the mould had destroyed colonies of staphylococcal bacteria around it.
Penicillin — the nemesis for the deadliest bacterial infections — was born. Gruelling work followed. In 1945, Fleming along with his legendary team of researchers Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. As World War II unleashed deaths and miseries, a miracle weapon armed doctors against life-threatening bacterial infections. Until then, minor cuts or bruises carried risks of deaths. Penicillin saved lives of soldiers grievously injured during the war.
An article in Science Museum describes the quick build-up to make the drug. It says such was its demand that scientists used every conceivable object — from bed pans to bathtubs — to store volumes of broth for the fermentation process. Gallons of mould broth were needed to get a fingernail of penicillin, says the article. With time, as scientists developed better methods of extraction, it spawned dozens of producers across Europe and the US.
THE OWNERSHIP GAME Nearly a century from its discovery, the relevance of the wonder drug has only grown in combating
