Why Did It Take so Long for Penicillin to Be Produced in Britain on a Large Scale?

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Why did it take so long for penicillin to be produced in Britain on a large scale? It took a long time for penicillin to be produced on a large scale in Britain because of many reasons. First of all, the discovery of penicillin was a chance discovery which meant that Fleming wasn’t prepared to put it forward as much as Florey and Chain did. After the discovery had been made, Fleming had to spend a long time researching why and how it killed the bacteria, which took time. Other than the chance discovery, another factor that held back Fleming was government funding. After Fleming published his results, the government wasn’t interested in developing it because they thought there was no need for it so with no funding, Fleming decided abandon his research. After his discovery it took Florey and Chain another 10 years to read about it and start the research. At this time, WW2 had broke out which deprived the government of a lot of money as many factories and other places were being bombed, hence Florey and Chain also didn’t get any funding from the british government because penicillin required a range of equipment and people which the government couldn’t provide. Penicillin only came to Britain after it had been mass produced in USA which took another 3 years. Hence many factors delayed the mass production of penicillin in Britain and stretched out the time period for almost 15 years due to complex situations such as wars, lack of funding, economy downfall and the government’s lack of interest in this discovery. I think that the factor that helped its progress is chance because Fleming discovered it by chance, individualism and perseverance of Florey and Chain and again chance that WW2 broke out and they were funded by

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