[wat10000]

How do you know it's not effective? The cost per life saved is extremely high now, but this stuff gets better over time. How much did penicillin cost to produce originally?

[inglor_cz]

Early penicilin was rare enough that they collected the urine of the first patients and re-extracted penicilin from it for further use.

[lukevp]

Isn’t penicillin just bread mold? So probably not a great example.

[wat10000]

And yet, the first patient treated with mass-produced penicillin used half the total supply, and the stuff was so rare that it was extracted from patients' urine for reuse.