I write about wartime penicillin rivalry from a seemingly unique perspective : as a practitioner from the world of politics

It constantly amazes me that all the noteworthy books and academic papers to date on wartime penicillin have been written either by people from the worlds of medicine/science or by historians and economists of industry, science and technology.

Where, oh where, are people from the world of politics and political science when it comes to writing about the highly politicized saga of wartime (and postwar) penicillin ?

Here's why I ask :

America is notorious for being historically reluctant to sign international treaties.

So no real surprise the US didn't negotiate a wartime treaty with Britain over dividing the postwar spoils from the supposedly world-changing industry of atomic energy .

But surprisingly America did negotiate - and sign - a wartime treaty with Britain over dividing the spoils of the postwar penicillin industry.

Pax Americana 

And , for a regrettably short time, penicillin diplomacy seriously rivalled atomic diplomacy in America's arsenal of Pax Americana.

Finally my main point is that the tipping point moment for America in decisively winning the soft power battle for postwar global cultural hegemony (against Britain, not Russia) happened during the opening movements of their rival penicillin diplomacy efforts.

That occurred when abundant American-produced penicillin - rather scarce British-discovered penicillin - became the dramatic lifesaver that was flown all over the Allied, Neutral and Axis world to save the dying and (somehow) just ended up on all the front pages of the world's newspaper reading public.

So for that last number of years I have been researching and writing about the small "p" and big "P" politics of wartime penicillin and sharing the results online.

Kevin Brown and Robert Bud still write of wartime penicillin

There are still a few that continue to actively research and write about wartime penicillin : I can think of Robert Bud and Kevin Brown, both in England , in particular.

There are others still working in academia who last produced seminal works on wartime penicillin ten to twenty five years ago who might have another go at the subject - but I personally doubt it.

To most outsiders and to almost all insiders, penicillin is the one area of antibiotics that has been almost too well researched - time to move on to fresher areas less tilled over.

Why merely 'shift the rubble' time again and again ?

But when seen through the prism of politics,  the fixed-in-aspic myth of wartime Anglo-American cooperation over penicillin seems due for some heavy wholesale revision.

After all , who today still believes the original fairytale about the heartwarming Anglo-American cooperation over The Bomb ?

And if the key takeaway story about wartime penicillin is Anglo-American rivalry not cooperation , perhaps the fact that all of the important research on wartime penicillin has comes from authors either Anglo or American might led one to think their national origins might taint their conclusions.

I hope research by an author from a nation that is often said to be part American and part British will be both sympathetic and critical and just might be able to throw up a completely different point of view....