Monday, March 26, 2012

Who am I? Why did you all not listen to me before?



I was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. In 1999, Time magazine named me as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his discovery of something and stated:
"It was a discovery that would change the course of history. The active ingredient in that mould, which ____________named __________, turned out to be an infection-fighting agent of enormous potency. When it was finally recognized for what it was, the most efficacious life-saving drug in the world, _________ would alter forever the treatment of bacterial infections. By the middle of the century, my discovery had spawned a huge pharmaceutical industry, churning out synthetic _______ that would conquer some of mankind's most ancient scourges, including syphilisgangrene and tuberculosis 



During my experiments
I noticed a halo of inhibition of bacterial growth around a contaminant blue-green mould on a Staphylococcus plate culture. I concluded that the mould was releasing a substance that was inhibiting bacterial growth. I grew a pure culture of the mould and discovered that it was __________ notatum. With help from a chemist I isolated what I later named "________". During the next twelve years, I grew and distributed the original mould, unsuccessfully trying to get help from any chemist that had enough skill to make a stable form of it for mass production. 








Modern antibiotics are tested using a method similar to my discovery 







I am Alexander Fleming
My discovery is pencillin from Penicillium notatum.


Fleming cautioned about the use of penicillin in his many speeches around the world. He cautioned not to use penicillin unless there was a properly diagnosed reason for it to be used, and that if it were used, never to use too little, or for too short a period, since these are the circumstances under which bacterial resistance to antibiotics develops. UNFORTUNATELY WE KNOW THE WORLD DID NOT LISTEN - NOW WE KNOW ABOUT ALL THE ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT BACTERIA!

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