🌊 Ripple · counterfactual
What if Mass-produced antibiotics had gone differently?
1943 · north-america
Penicillin goes from lab curiosity to industrial output in time to change what an infection means.
If it had gone differently: Antibiotics stay rare and experimental for another two decades; infection keeps its old grip on surgery and childbirth.
What it made possible
Later turning points that leaned on Mass-produced antibiotics. Change it in the game and the ripples reach all of these.
- 1950The Green Revolution. Without it, Famine stays a normal feature of the late 20th century; populations in Asia and Latin America stall.
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