Earth Day 2018: Fejr en verden renset af kapitalisme

Ninety-four years ago, Calvin Coolidge, Jr

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22/04/2018

Ninety-four years ago, Calvin Coolidge, Jr., while playing tennis on the White House grounds, got a blister on his toe. One week later, the 16-year-old son of the president of the U.S. lay dead. Bacteria infected the blister and killed young Coolidge.

Four years later, Alexander Fleming invented penicillin, an antibiotic that would have saved the boy’s life.

We now largely take antibiotics for granted. Yet this invention — along with the commercial, financial, and transportation infrastructures that make antibiotics widely available — has saved lives too many to count. Antibiotics cleanse our bodies of one of history’s most noxious and commonplace pollutants: excess bacteria.