dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (03/19/86)
Two NOVA programs and a book should be of interest to the readers of net.med,
given our recent discussions about antibiotics.
This week's NOVA program on PBS, "The Rise of a Wonder Drug", details
the discovery and first clinical applications of penicillin. Really
quite interesting, with interviews with many of the people who played
important roles in the early work of the late 30's and 40's.
Next week treats the problem of the development of bacterial resistance to
antibiotics, a phenomenon frequently seen in clinical situations, especially
in hospitals.
John Sheehan's "The Enchanted Ring: The Untold Story of Penicillin", MIT Press,
1984, complements the NOVA program on penicillin, relating its development and
synthesis from the point of view of the person to first synthesize the drug.
"The enchanted ring" refers to the beta-lactam moiety of the penicillin
molecule which bestows upon it antibiotic properties. For synthetic chemists,
it was a difficult ring to crack, though it seems resistant bacteria solved
this problem more quickly!
--
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{bbncca,bbnccv,harvard,ima,ihnp4}!spdcc!dyer