Fleming's Folly

Accidents aren’t supposed to happen in a laboratory, but for Alexander Fleming, it was a stroke of luck.

Fleming, a Scottish researcher with a reputation for negligence in his work, was known to be a careless lab technician. In 1928, after studying staphylococcus bacteria (which causes boils and sore throats), Fleming went on a vacation, only to find out when he returned that one of his culture plates had become contaminated.

He examined the fungus that had grown, discovering that the staphylococci on the petri dish had died. The area surrounding the contaminant had been clear of bacteria, meaning that it had most likely released a substance inhibiting bacterial growth.

Fleming later found that the mysterious liquid - referred to as his “mold juice” - was capable of eliminating harmful bacteria, like those which cause diphtheria and strep throat. Despite his attempts, he was eventually unable to extract pure penicillin from the mold juice, though he had discovered the world’s first true antibiotic.

It was later turned into a life-saving drug by researchers Howard Flory and Ernst Chain at Oxford University in the late 1930s, who were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize with Fleming for their findings.

After its discovery, penicillin was mass-produced and used to treat wounded soldiers afflicted by bacterial infections on the front lines of World War 2. Around 2.3 million doses of penicillin were manufactured in preparation for the D-Day landings in 1944, and it is estimated that 1 in 7 lives were saved by this “miracle drug,” as it was called at the time.

Today, penicillin is the most widely used antibiotic in the world. Many other antibiotics are derived from it, and it continues to treat bacterial infections in different parts of the body.

However, resistance to penicillin and general antibiotics has become a growing concern: it occurs when certain types of bacteria adapt to antibiotics given to counter a specific condition and therefore are not affected by it when they should be decimated. Known as multi-resistant organisms (MROs), some bacteria are resistant to many antibiotics and pose a serious concern to public health.

Resistant bacteria might develop an ability to stop the medicine’s effect, pump the medicine out of the cell, or mutate so that they aren’t influenced by it.

This can lead to diseases that are difficult to treat - examples include MRSA, one of the most common infections acquired at a hospital, and tuberculosis.

Though action against antibiotic resistance is still in the works, many lives have been saved as a result of penicillin’s discovery, all thanks to Fleming’s folly.