a review of “The Greatest Good to the Greatest Number” by DONALD G ANDERSON, with assistance by david p adams

Is Comrade Dawson really wartime penicillin’s only VILLAIN - or was he, in fact,  its only HERO ?

Yes, yes, I know the book is officially recorded at the Registry of Copyrights and by the Library of Congress has having been written completely by David P Adams, with Donald G Anderson being but one of the people he interviewed.

But this is MY review, God Damn It, and that’s the way it reads to me.

A great danger among young PhD researchers is when your supervisor steers you to a vast archival treasure trove that no one else has really looked at : a great PhD, a great book, a great launch to your academic career. But your supervisor should also warn you about the dreaded Stockholm Archives Syndrome.

You have really got to balance your great secret find with extensive readings in other places , places that view these same events from a critically different point of view.

As a PhD and a book, the Greatest Good et al seems unduly dominated by a view of the whole WWII penicillin saga, as seen by the recently safely retired Dr Anderson, former deputy to wartime Penicillin Rationing Czar, Dr Chester Keefer, and accurately reflecting the recently deceased Keefer’s private wartime views as well.

It comes across as the semi-official history that the Keefer and Anderson felt that the NAS COC never really got at war’s end : as told to david p adams. They both deeply resented being seen by the wartime public as the leaders of cruel heartless (Republican) death panels.

 But I have suggested they themselves created this situation by forever stalling on serious natural penicillin production, in the hopes of the OSRD-COC-Merck-Florey-Fleming-Oxford University collective that it would be soon synthesized (and patented ).

I think the book’s successful creation of Keefer as one of wartime’s penicillin’s chief heroes and the successful creation of his opponent, Dr Martin Henry Dawson, as wartime penicillin’s only villain is a complete Ministry of the Truth reversal of the evidence.

In fact the main reason I carry on researching my account of Dawson’s wartime penicillin efforts....