OPRD and Dawson vs OSRD and Florey : social or war penicillin ?

If America was to win the war for the Allies by being becoming a ponderous and relentlessly-slow grinding mill of the gods ( a veritable "Arsenal of Democracy" as President Roosevelt proclaimed) than sometimes Vannevar Bush's OSRD (Office of Scientific Research and Development) worked hard against that objective, never more so than with Penicillin (and DDT).

Chloroquine : hiding one of WWII's most valuable secrets in 'plain sight' : in the scientific literature

To understand how OSRD fumbled the ball on synthetic penicillin but neatly hid the fact with lot of the taxpayers' money, consider the similar case of chloroquine, the best anti-malarial drug of WWII (aside from natural quinine) and a truly horrific example of the stupidity that can result from the excessive secrecy of war science.

Australians give away British Store

Mark Oliphant flew to America in a bomber to beg them to make the Atomic Bomb after British scientists had pushed its development while the American government held back.

Howard Florey flew to America in a Clipper plane to do ditto with Penicillin, a British development that the American government had also put on the back burner.

For both Australians, they did this out of strong personal conviction that it was the right thing to do.

It is true that both also did it with approval from some mid to upper level bureaucrats within the British government.

But there hadn't been anything like a full debate at the top of the British government  about the matter, before the Australians were allowed to give away the store.

If there had been, it might have led to very different decisions on what was to become so portentous to Britain's dismal post-war fate.

Try to imagine our world post-1945 if the British , not the Americans , held the whip hand in atomic bombs and penicillin.....