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Article: Sword or ploughshare. (antibiotics) (Science and Technology)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- June 2, 1990
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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JUST 50 years ago, on the morning of Saturday May 25 1940, Howard Florey and
his colleagues carried out some experiments o:) mice which demonstrated the antibiotic effects of penicillin. Since then penicillin and other antibiotics have helped to save innumerable lives. Yet even today nobody is sure how antibiotics first came to exist in the microbes that produce them. Scientists want to find out, because this knowledge might help them to track down new antibiotics, which are becoming rapidly harder to find. Two papers, soon to be published, by Dr Dudley Williams and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge, and Dr Julian Davies, of the Institut Pasteur in ...