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by natermer
2500 days ago
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The penicillin moment happened because penicillin actually came into existence and became widely available pretty rapidly. Research and speculation is awesome stuff, but the hard part isn't discovering new concepts. It is actually making those concepts into a marketable and affordable good. The evidence for this is that even though there is essentially a new 'breakthrough' discovery every other week for solar panels, or electric motors, or batteries.. We are still using what amounts to cutting-edge tech from the late 90's. In the modern era this means we generally have to wait till the patents expire and market competition kicks in in order to get the price low enough and the product perfected enough to see widespread usage. If it goes anywhere at all. It's also worth noting that Florey, the man who is largely responsible in making penicillin practical drug, refused to patent his early innovations to make it widespread as possible. |
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Having made that first breakthrough, world class teams across the globe fought to bring the efficiency up from "froth on the top of a brew" to "gallons of the stuff"
Florey was a big part of the story but so were teams in US and Europe and then the US military scaled it up beyond belief.
We spent money, targeted money, on the best teams globally and then put serious industrial might to it once they found the answers.
That exact approach is what I am calling for again.
And as for patents - if enough global effort is put in, with enough government funds, the pressure to put the results "in public hands" rather than hold out for patents is really strong
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin