Cold War Resistance: The International Struggle over Antibiotics

In June 1941 a pair of British scientists boarded a plane for America with World War II raging all around them. They carried a precious commodity—penicillin—and the knowledge that it would change history. Once the U.S. government had been debriefed, the Office of Science Research and Development, in conjunction with British counterparts, assumed control, and penicillin became a top-secret matter of national security, second in importance only to the atomic bomb.

In Cold War Resistance Marc L...