Allies gave penicillin only to 1A soldiers for same reason they gave Czechoslovakia only to Hitler

The Allies weaponizing penicillin was as morally wrong as appeasing Hitler by giving him Czechoslovakia on a platter , and for exactly the same reasons.

The Allies totally failed to see that giving everything to the mighty and nothing to the weak was exactly what caused the war in the first place: weaponizing penicillin was not going to win the war but rather cause Allies to lose the moral peace.

1939-1945 : Nesvizh Jews fight for life, at home and abroad

While Jews in the democratic West during WWII were unwilling  to do something even as minor as chaining themselves to government fences ( a la the suffragettes) to protest the mass killing of their counterparts in Europe, this did not mean that other Jews were not fighting for their right to life in those years.

Consider the brave Jews of Nesvizh.

Ninety percent of the Jews of that small city, 60 miles south west of Minsk (today part of Belarus, then part of Poland), were killed by the Germans, in one day, in October 1941.

The remaining 600, locked in a tiny ghetto, resolved to try an armed breakout, rather than die quietly.

1940 Penicillin : localized Gas Gangrene or systemic SBE ?

Within days of reading war-dodger Howard Florey's published conclusion that the as-yet-unproven penicillin was particularly suited to the military's most feared infection, gas gangrene, war-hero Henry Dawson defiantly decided - by pointed contrast - that penicillin was particularly well suited to defeat the ultimate in non-military infections, deadly subacute bacterial endocarditis, SBE.

The timing of Dawson's decision - during the most critical days of the expected Invasion of Britain - only heighten this highly unusual contrast between how we expect war-heroes and war-dodgers to behave and how these two examples actually did behave.

Resetting the Allied moral compass so that it diverged from the Nazis, not merely followed a muted parallel course

It remains unknown whether Henry Dawson expected his quixotic wartime efforts (to "waste" weaponized penicillin on 'useless' SBEs ) to go as far as they ultimately did.

He certainly was extremely unhappy that America was treating its wartime 'SBE lives unworthy of life' in almost as bad a fashion as Nazi Germany was known to be doing to its SBEs and others seen as "useless mouths".

But did he suspect his assault on weaponizing penicillin would extend beyond the Allies' horrific wartime neglect of the poorer chronically ill ?

The Cure for Auschwitz Disease : "Dawson's Crude" : .56% penicillin ...and 99 and 44/100ths pure love

Pray there comes a day when most premature deaths really are 'Acts of God', when even the best of money and the best of medical care could not result in a happy ending.

But until that happier day, most premature deaths in the world - in peace as in war - are 'Acts of Humanity' , or rather 'Acts of Lack of Humanity'.

Sins of Omission : premature death caused because the people dying are not judged (by others more fortunate) as worthy of devoting much money or effort towards saving.

Re-setting the Allies' moral compass : the acid test of penicillin for wartime endocarditis

Please correct me : but in all my research I could find no indication that in his 15 years of medical research before October 16th 1940, (and he was a world-class expert in the area of strep bacteria) Henry Dawson had never written or spoken one peep - not one peep - on the subject of endocarditis, a very common and deadly disease, usually caused then by a variant of strep bacteria.

Most of the penicillin grown in its first 15 years, was wasted on useless attempts at synthesis, not used to save the dying

If my claim be wrong : show me the money !

Medical ethics - not medical techniques - are probably the leading way to decrease or increase deaths due to war

How doctors and nurses morally regard all of their fellow human beings, rather than how they medically treat their actual, relatively few, patients, is probably the number one determinate in whether wars are relatively bloodless or particularly bloody.

The entire culture takes many of its moral cues from the medical professionals and when they (as in WWII Germany and America )  sanction or even advocate neglecting or killing those judged lesser than others, this attitude bleeds across the whole country and into the actions of its troops --with horrendous consequences.

Like Germany, Howard Florey effortlessly won all the tactical battles, losing only the strategic war to Henry Dawson

Eugenics was on the side of the Big Battalions...

Howard Florey was a WWII chicken-hawk, so it little surprises that his chosen hobby-horse, Allied war medicine, was vigorously and publicly 'On the Side of the Big Battalions'.

That meant making a virtue of denying aid to dying 4Fs, to give it instead to healthy 1As.

 But as Hitler had earlier found out to his cost, this was not a position designed to win over the small battalions of the world's hearts and minds.

The Allied battle for the world's 'hearts and minds' : NS-born Henry Dawson's patient-penicillin vs OSRD war-penicillin

Army is - wrongly - blamed for her SBE death

The idea that successful American governments need first to win over the 'hearts and minds' of people, before they rush to impose their objectives by legal and military fiat is an old, old , old one.

Presidents John Adams used the phrase "hearts and mind" in this sense early in the 19th century, long before Presidents FDR, Kennedy and Johnson made it famous in the 20th century - and before recent presidents George W Bush and Obama dragged it out of the archives to use in this century.

Dawson long been obsessed with SBE ? Show me ! 'Cause I'm from Missouri ...

Dawson & SBE ?! well I'm from MISSOURI

Even Gladys Hobby says so.

And God Knows, she should know almost better than anyone but Dawson himself.

Aktion 47% : saving the 4Fs in a time of the 1As , putting them back to work and paying taxes : the OTHER Manhattan project

Romneycare DEATH PANELS for the 47%

In 1941, penicillin was lying about in the gutter, part of the medical world's unfit 47%.

"Little Belgium" : Floor "G" Columbia Presbyterian Hospital , Oct 16th 1940 - Feb 4th 1945

"LITTLE BELGIUM"

On October 16th 1940, the first day of registration for America's WWII Draft, Belgium was well past defending from the Boche.

Nova Scotian-born Dr Henry Dawson and the "Invention" of systemic - natural - penicillin

The "Invention" of systemic - natural - penicillin

Discovery vs Invention

Many substances were "discovered" many years (sometimes centuries) before they were (re) "invented" as having a highly useful medical effect.

Helping MO go CO : 4Fs, Women and the Grace of God ...

In the short term,during his tragically short life, Martin Henry Dawson and his tiny band did nothing more than pique the supporters of Modernity.

Annoyed them, but nothing else.

But over the longer term, Dawson's Pen "G" team were in the first ranks of those easing Modernity, 'The Father Of All Evils' , off the global stage and replacing it with our new world of Commensality.

Their natural penicillin triumph was the first in a long series of blows that replace the hitherto dominant chemical cartels with today's biotech giants.

(A mixed blessing, admitably, but still a turn away from Man as the Be-all of all Knowledge to a recognition that we have much to learn from Nature.)

In the long run, it was Dawson's HGT DNA that was the fatal blow, coming from the direction of Science rather than  from post-Auschwitz morality, that finally did in (Social) Darwinism.

So, beyond saving the lives of a few World War II SBE patients and beyond finally kick-starting natural penicillin production worldwide during that war, Dawson's efforts had a far longer term, far wider, affect that is worth honoring...