Schatz had been earning fifty dollars: (Tillitt, 1944)
“I worked day and night”: (Schatz, 1993)
“a search for an antibiotic agent”: (Schatz, 1993)
“medicine as a cooperative science”: (Mayo Clinic, 2001–2015)
top veterinary pathologist . . . William Feldman: (Greenwood, 2008)
Streptomycin was effective: (Pringle, 2012)
Merck overruled his scientific staff: (Silcox, 1946)
Randolph Major put him to work: (Folkers, 1990)
“with some chicken wire”: (Folkers, 1990)
“extremely imaginative, able, wonderful scientist”: (Tishler, 1983)
twenty-three had survived: (Waksman, The Conquest of Tuberculosis, 1964)
“not the reason that we started working on it”: This quote appears in dozens of biographies of Florey, but the original quote is from (Florey, 1967)
Merck scientists were allowed: (Tishler, 1983)
“You might care to wait”: (Pringle, 2012)
In 1946, the War Department published: (Merck, “Biological Warfare,” 1946)
twenty-two honorary doctoral degrees: (Daniel, 2001), 199
“new composition of matter” (Waksman, The Conquest of Tuberculosis, 1964)
“we gave you all the credit”: (American Chemical Society, 2005)
“they were my tools, my hands, if you please”: (American Chemical Society, 2005)
“you had nothing to do”: (Waller, 2004)
“selected twelve patients”: (Bhatt, 2010)
“we shall see how many funerals”: (Doll, 1994)
so-called alternate allocation studies: (Podolsky, 2015)
Austin Bradford Hill: (Le Fanu, 1999)
“since the opportunity would never come again”: (Le Fanu, 1999)
so had thirty-two who had received the treatment: (Le Fanu, 1999)
in 1946 Lehmann had published an article: (Lehmann, 1946)
“the combination of PAS with streptomycin”: (MRC, 1949)
an almost unbelievable 80 percent: (Le Fanu, 1999)
SEVEN: “Satans into Seraphs”
It took nearly three years of testing: (Duggar, 1948)
“tinged with enthusiasm”: (Podolsky, 2015) This was from Max Finland to Benjamin Carey, Lederle’s director of laboratories.
“the most versatile antibiotic”: (Podolsky, 2015)
shipping samples of their gold maker to 142,000 doctors: (Silberman, 1960), quoted in (Podolsky, 2015)
“We got soil samples”: (Rodengen, 1999)
“because it came from the earth”: (Rodengen, 1999)
“If you want to lose your shirt”: (Podolsky, 2015)
Aureomycin accounted for 26 percent: (McEvilla, 1955)
“outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis”: (Nobel Prize Foundation, 2014)
complicated molecule known as Vitamin B12: (Woodward, 1973)
“None of us thought he was really that great”: (Tishler, 1983)
it was Woodward who demonstrated that the beta-lactam structure: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
facts “both clear and misleading”: (Blout, 2001)
“by thought alone, deduced the correct structure”: (Blout, 2001)
the FDA approved it: (Daemmrich, 2004)
on March 23, 1950: (Maeder, 1994)
seventy third-year medical students: (Mahoney, 1958)
By 1952, three hundred Pfizer reps: (Chandler, 2005)
By the early 1950s, more money: (Podolsky, 2015)
Lederle planned to launch Achromycin: (Maeder, 1994)
stabilized thereafter for another decade: (Temin, 1980)
Achromycin, its version of tetracycline: (Temin, 1980)
“Doctors Get a Heap of Comfort”: (Grinnell, 1914)
the journal was carrying more advertising pages: (Temin, 1980)
virtually every issue of JAMA arrived: (Podolsky, 2015)
The mechanism for this: (Gaskins, 2002)
“dug residues out of the Lederle dump”: (Jukes, 1985)
“Wonder Drug . . . had been found”: (Laurence, 1950)
“The average weight”: (Jukes, 1985)
what he called “Project Piglet” . . . as Terralac: (Rodengen, 1999)
Only the 31 showed resistance: (North, 1945)
May 1940, milk cows: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
milked before the penicillin: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
dosages were very small: (Graham, 2007)
biofilms, matrices that hold: (Davies, 2009)
EIGHT: “The Little Stranger”
“the only House in the West” . . . and Wormseed: (Kahn, 1976)
“profit on blood which has been donated”: (Madison, 1989)
to three-quarters of the entire American market: (Chandler, 2005)
were “unreasonably high”: (Madison, 1989)
“novel compound having antibiotic properties”: (Bunch, 1952)
“looks at present quite hopelessly complex”: (Todd, 1956)
The drug was Chloromycetin: (McEvilla, 1955)
“ether, sweet spirits of nitre”: (Hoeffle, 2000)
Parke was its first president: (Mahoney, 1958)
“difficult to believe that one is under the influence of any drug at all”: (Byck, 1974)
“the different varieties of coca”: (Parke, Davis & Company, 1894)
“involving four thousand miles”: (Parke, Davis & Company, 1894)
Davis even hired Freud himself: (Maeder, 1994) Freud’s evaluation, for which he was paid an honorarium of 60 Dutch gulden—about $50—found that Merck’s cocaine was, compared to Parke-Davis’s, overpriced and difficult to find. (Van de Vijver, 2002)
“revive sexual existence”: (Maine Academy of Medicine and Science, 1897) Damiana is still marketed as an herbal aphrodisiac today.
first full-scale pharmaceutical research laboratory: (Chandler, 2005)
an émigré Basque farmer: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
more than seven thousand samples: (Burkholder, 1946)
a new antibiotic-producing organism: (Maeder, 1994)
a colony of S. venezuelae: (Greenwood, 2008)
“a teaspoon of soil”: (Maeder, 1994)
The chemists at Parke-Davis gave it a nickname: (Maeder, 1994) Slightly later, on April 18, 1947, a team at the University of Illinois, under plant pathologist David Gottlieb and chemist Herbert Carter, isolated the same antibiotic source from composted soil at the university’s Agricultural Experiment Station at Urbana. Their work was funded by Abbott Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Upjohn, and Parke-Davis itself, which was hedging its own bet. When, at a joint meeting, the Parke-Davis representatives realized that the Illinois culture, which they had named 8-44, was identical to their own “Little Stranger,” Gottlieb’s group withdrew and Parke-Davis left the consortium.
typhus killed as many as one German in ten: (Byrne, 2008)
typhus epidemic in the new Soviet Union: (Raoult, 2004)
Dr. Eugene Payne, had arrived in Bolivia: (Maeder, 1994)
Following fermentation . . . be extracted: (Maeder, 1994)
“The Greatest Drug Since Penicillin”: (Podolsky, 2015)
more than $55 million in annual sales: (Maeder, 1994)
“Aplastic Anemia Due to Chloramphenicol”: (Loyd, 1952)
more than four million people: (Maeder, 1994)
Only 61 of the victims: (Marks, 2012)
Benzene, for example, which is known to attack: (Smith, M., 1996)
“evidence was reasonably convincing”: (Marks, 2012)
“We can’t go on certifying”: (Maeder, 1994)
A 1954 survey by the American Medical Association: (Temin, 1980)
“regulate the professional
activities of physicians”: (Marks, 2012)
nine-tenths of all prescribed medicines: (Moskowitz, 1957)
“sprawled on the public curb”: (Maeder, 1994)
The risk of contracting aplastic anemia: (Temin, 1980)
“the ‘drummer’ of the drug house”: (Brody, 2007)
“for instruction in the use of medicines”: (Rasmussen, “The Drug Industry,” 2005)
They weren’t anything as low-rent: (Rothman, S., 2004)
“Detailing is, in reality, sales promotion”: (Jones, T., 1940)
“The well-informed ‘detail-man’”: (Peterson, 1959)
“A generation of physicians”: (Bean, 1955)
“The Professional Service Pharmacist’s job”: (Peterson, 1959)
the equivalent of a seminar in pharmacology: (Brody, 2007)
“If we put horse manure”: (Maeder, 1994)
“Chloromycetin has been officially cleared”: (Maeder, 1994)
“undoubtedly the highest compliment” . . . jobs worth having at Parke-Davis: (Maeder, 1994)
Gray babies frequently showed: (Maeder, 1994)
Thomas Hicks won the 1904 Olympic marathon: (Abbott, 2012)
“such conditions as . . . iron deficiency anemia”: (Council on Drugs, 1960)
a comparable percentage of patients who took penicillin: (Temin, 1980)
NINE: “Disturbing Proportions”
“There is a need for writers”: (Sexton, 2007)
“Prescription of antibiotics”: (Lear, “Taking the Miracle Out,” 1959)
“part of the blame”: (Holmes, The Writings, 1899)
“Established ethical drug companies”: (Lear, “Taking the Miracle Out,” 1959)
“Sigmamycin . . . the antibiotic therapy of choice”: (Podolsky, 2015)
“the most factual”: (Saturday Review, 1959)
“attention to drug ads”: (Saturday Review, 1959)
“Who better than the pharmaceutical industry”: (Podolsky, 2015)
“Where my income comes from”: (Lear, “The Certification of Antibiotics,” 1959)
barely enough to pay his income tax: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
paid directly to Henry Welch: (Maeder, 1994)
“The February issue”: (Podolsky, 2015)
“simultaneous and varied attack”: (Podolsky, 2015)
sixty-one fixed-dose combination antibiotics: (Podolsky, 2015)
“with other useful therapeutic agents”: (Podolsky, 2015)
randomized clinical trials made measuring: (Carpenter, 2010)
“The final verdict on the value”: (Podolsky, 2015)
“advertising of soaps and tooth pastes”: (Podolsky, 2015)
“none-too-happy picture”: (Blair, 1938)
“sold twenty of [the] fifty-one”: (Maeder, 1994)
margins were as high as 27 percent: (Bud, “Antibiotics, Big Business,” 2005)
“he who buys does not order”: (Congressional Quarterly, 1960)
“SENATE PANEL CITES MARK-UP ON DRUGS RANGING TO 7,079%”: (Finney, 1959)
“about 10,000 percent”: (Congressional Quarterly, 1960)
“brainwashing” tactics and “perverted marketing attitudes”: (Congressional Quarterly, 1960)
Dirksen described Kefauver: (Silverman, 1974)
an antibiotic would be useless at any price: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
that seemed to underplay its risks: (Maeder, 1994)
“As a physician I blush with shame”: (Podolsky, 2015)
“meaningless pseudoscientific jargon”: (Kuehn, 2010)
Eight West German pediatric clinics: (Mintz, 1962)
distributed more than 2.5 million thalidomide pills: (McFadyen, 1976)
“‘HEROINE’ OF FDA”: (Mintz, 1962)
“This is the story of how”: (Mintz, 1962)
“a rare combination of factors”: (Stephens, 2001)
A Kansas City woman: (Swann, “FDA and the Practice of Pharmacy,” 1994)
“clear-cut method of distinguishing”: (Reilly, 2006)
“on the basis of opinions generally held”: (Reilly, 2006)
required the FDA to review every drug: (Maeder, 1994)
“adequate and well-controlled studies”: (Junod, 2014)
“almost impossible to find”: (Carpenter, 2010) The best-documented examples of this were Kelsey’s denial of IND status—FDA permission to ship a drug across state lines to clinical investigators before it has been approved—to both dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), whose popularity persists in the world of alternative medicine, and LSD.
EPILOGUE: “The Adaptability of the Chemist”
GlaxoSmithKline, between 1995 and 2001: (Payne, 2007)
the FDA approved only three: (Porter, 2014)
more than $400 million: (DiMasi, 2003). Joseph DiMasi and his team at Tufts University added to the $400 million figure the cost of capital over the course of the drug’s development; at a rate of 11 percent (which was itself fairly controversial), this doubled the cost, to about $800 million. With inflation, this is the billion-dollar price tag widely quoted today.
R & D cost of $43.4 million: (Light, 2011)
“there is no reasonable estimate available”: (Light, 2011)
“It is not difficult to make microbes”: (Fleming, “Penicillin,” 1945)
Bacterial spores in the soil: (New Scientist, 1972)
“indiscriminately to all patients”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
80 percent of primary care doctors: (Seppa, 2014)
up to 40 percent of patients fail to comply: (Kardas, 2006)
only 96 antibiotics remain available today: (Kinch, 2014)
It now stands at eleven: (Kinch, 2014)
Dr. Fischbach wrote a software program: (Zimmer, 2014)
“the adaptability of the chemist”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
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