British media and Dr.Fleming(2)

continued ---------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

   Florey's reaction to this contentious publicity was one of horror.

When, following Robinson's letter, the reporters descended on the

Dunn School he refused to see them. There was more behind this

reaction than a personal dislike of publicity. 

He knew that sensational stories about penicillin would create a 

demand that could not possibly be satisfied at that time, and wold 

thus lead to tragic disappointments. He knew also that limelight is 

bad for research workers, being distracting and disruptive, and did 

notwant his team to be exposed to it.

Finally, there was at that time a strong ethical disapproval of doctors 

who advertised themselves or their work by giving personal interviews

to the lay press; the General Medical Council had been known to strike

such offenders off the Medical Register. 

Florey would not be liable to such strong measures since he was not in 

clinical practice, but a disinclination to talk to the press was general 

throughout the medical profession. So Florey told Mrs. Turner to send 

the reporters away; and it was not unnatural that they should have gone, 

somewhat resentfully, to an obviously warmer welcome,e at St. Mary's 

Hospital.

 During the nest two years scores of articles on penicillin and many

interviews with Fleming appeared in the public press. Anyone

without prior knowledge who read these would be left in no doubt that

Fleming was the man---- indeed the only---- person responsible for the

therapeutic use of penicillin. and these versions of 'penicillin story'

are given in such circumstantial details that even someone familiar

with the truth might begin to doubt his own knowledge.

This image of  Fleming as sole creator of penicillin therapy was made

to seem credible only because certain facts ignored or distorted.

The true facts are:

       first, that Fleming did nothing obvious to promote penicillin

               therapy between 1929 and 1941.

      second, that the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford

              was the first laboratory to produce penicillin on  a large scale

             and to show that it protected infected animals.

      third, that the first effective clinical trials was on patients in an

            Oxford Hospital, in which Fleming took no part.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------