The Greatest Fan

Disclaimer: This is purely a piece of fiction. Any resemblance to a person living is purely coincidental

Lionel Messi and la Albiceleste are crowned the new holders of Copa America. A long wait has come to an end for their diehard fans. Argentina, for some reason is one team with a huge fan following in our state, Kerala in India. No one knows the exact reason for the fascination the team holds equally for a septuagenarian Communist leader and a school kid fan of Leo Messi. One major reason for this fascination for the older generations must be adulation for Diego Maradona and the series of unforgettable games played by his team at Mexico in 1986. Diego, highly emotional, immensely talented was inspiring his group of gifted players to give their best as a team. Valdano, Burruchaga or Pumpido, members of Carlos Bilardo’s world champions became household names after the World Cup that we saw in colour on TV. We have one great fan of la Albiceleste in our close friends circle. Forever loyal, emotional like him, he even had a striking resemblance to his idol, the great Diego from a certain angle. Although we watched and played many games together, he was always guarded when it came to games featuring Argentina. This became the norm after one unforgettable night 15 years ago when Argentina played Germany in the quarter finals of the 2006 World Cup. With his team progressing from the “group of death” as the toppers, he had made all arrangements for us to watch the game together at a leading club in the city. He arrived at the venue quite early and reserved the seats in the prime location within the hall. His entire family, including his Mother was to be seated on a rear table. Confident of his team doing good on the night, he was very cheerful and saw to it that everyone was comfortably seated to watch them play. Both teams were well balanced and evenly matched with Argentina developing their game around their midfield general Juan Román Riquelme and Germans led by Michael Ballack had, in their ranks, the lethal striking duo Klose and Podolski. With Riquelme commanding the midfield Argentina dominated the first half, rarely letting the ball reach the German strikers. First half ended goalless and he was very cheerful as we analysed the match during the interval. Argentina continued to press forward after the break and in the 49th minute, Riquelme delivered in a corner pin-pointing Roberto Ayala, who merely had to put his head on the ball, giving Argentina a 1- 0 lead. They appeared well on course for more, when abruptly, to our astonishment, Jose Pekerman substituted Riquelme with Esteban Cambiasso. An uncertainty or confusion descended on his face as the Germans pounced on the opportunity and suddenly started counter attacking. With Argentina falling back to defend, Miroslav Klose equalized for Germany in the 80th minute, moving him to the edge of his seat.  Without Riquelme, Argentina was nowhere near the team they had been for the initial 72 minutes. Teams could not break the deadlock after the extra time and the match went into penalty shootout. With tension mounting and pressure building up, every German player successfully converted whereas the scorer of their goal in the regulation time Ayala and the substitute Cambiasso, failed for Argentina. He sat silently, heartbroken, inconsolable, refusing to get up from his seat. After much persuasion, he came out of the hall but with his family waiting for him to return home, he felt reluctant to face his family. Finally, the supporters of Argentina and Germany and the neutrals somehow managed to send him home. We have never before or since seen someone so devastated by the defeat of his favourite team, from a faraway land across the world that he had taken to his heart. Today, as Messi, and team brought down the canaries at Maracana on the back of an Angel di Maria strike, to lift the Copa and end a nearly 3 decade title drought, he celebrated alongside the several diehard Argentina fans from our place who burst crackers and distributed sweets. And we, his close friends and fans shouted “vamos la albiceleste” and said three cheers to their greatest fan.

The "Gold Maker" and the Unlikely Triumvirate

Human race is in the middle of one the most widespread global pandemics in history. Interdisciplinary and international teams of scientists and multinational conglomerates have embarked on a race against time for developing ways to immunize people against many, if not all, coronaviruses. Without downplaying the the gravity of the crisis, it may be noted that while some of the pandemics that ravaged humanity in previous centuries particularly affected young children and babies, for some reason or the other, the coronavirus has mostly spared them. We were at college when another deadly pandemic appeared to make a re-entry through Surat, India in 1994. Immediate intervention, in the form of prevention and treatment avoided the spread of the disease far and wide and fewer than 1,200 people were diagnosed with the plague, which was contained in 2 weeks. Tetracycline had hit the headlines then, as the life saver, just as Covishield and Covaxin now. Panic stricken people thronged medical stores and tetracycline tablets were sold out in no time. The 325-crore Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited, which had accumulated huge losses and had been contemplating stopping production of the antibiotic, had to run three shifts in its two plants to meet the public demand.  

The first tetracycline antibiotic was the Aureomycin. The drug has an interesting history behind it. A team of most unlikely triumvirate had collaborated in the development of the drug. A reclusive immigrant who was refused citizenship, had recruited the son of a Confederate officer for the discovery and the most famous black doctor in America, the son of a freed slave, to conduct the clinical trials in the development of the drug, one of the major milestones in disease control and eradication in human history. 

Circa 1942, Dr. Benjamin Duggar, an American plant physiologist, received a call from the Chief of Research of a small pharma company in New York, Lederle Laboratories, enquiring if he would like to take up a role in the research to develop the next broad-spectrum antibiotic. The 70-year-old had been advised to go into retirement by his University as he was “too old” and because his specialty was no longer needed there. The Chief saw “experience” in what others judged “too old” and thought that in Dr. Duggar he might have found Lederle’s “antibiotic hunter.” One day in 1945, while extracting molds from soil samples, Dr. Duggar noticed one with an unusual gold-color. With the Chief overseeing his work, he tested the mold he had labeled A-377. To the elation of the team, A-377 proved effective in halting the growth of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including the microbes responsible for bubonic plague, tuberculosis, typhus, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The quest for the first broad spectrum antibiotic since streptomycin had been realized. However, with the limited manpower and resources available, it took them another three years of testing, before Duggar was confident enough with his finding to publish a paper. In the paper the antibiotic organism he discovered was given the name ‘streptomyces aureofaciens’, the “gold maker.” His colleagues liked the name and gave the drug its brand name, Aureomycin (Aureo is Latin for gold). The paper notified Lederle’s much bigger competitors that they had lost the race to find the first post-war broad-spectrum antibiotic. If Fleming's pencillin was effective only against gm +ve bacteria and Vaksmann's streptomycin was effective only against gm -ve bacteria, it was the Aureomycin which was the first to counter both. 

Lederle Labs did not have an agreement with any top testing hospital or medical school for conducting the human tests. The Chief and Dr. Duggar decided to approach Dr. Louis Tompkins Wright, a New York based Surgeon and Civil Rights Activist, whom they considered eminently qualified to conduct the tests. He had by then published nearly 90 papers in leading scientific journals, 35 of them about antibiotics. Dr. Wright, who had just returned to work after a three-year leave of absence to recuperate from a severe bout of tuberculosis, was enthusiastic about undertaking the trials. He started his trials of Aureomycin on patients with infections that had resisted all other treatments. He went on to publish more than 30 papers on his trials with the antibiotics and his research paved the way for the drug to earn FDA approval for manufacturing and widespread use. 

However, tragically, by the time Aureomycin was ready to go on sale in December 1948, Lederle’s Chief of Research was no longer alive to celebrate it. He had passed away in August, at the age of 53, unheralded and virtually unknown beyond a small group of researchers. His colleague Doron K. Antrim paid a touching tribute with the following lines: "You've probably never heard of him; yet because he lived you may live longer". 

Millions of people around the world live a longer and healthier life because of folic acid vitamins, tetracycline antibiotics, and anti-filarial (the drug Hetrazan which was used by WHO against filariasis) and anti-cancer drugs (Methotrexate is still in widespread clinical use today), developed under the tutelage of this wizard of wonder drugs. Besides the conquest of many illnesses that had troubled mankind for centuries, he had contributed to the understanding of life processes such as muscular contraction which gets the living world's work done. He was in the Harvard tradition "the brain" and could perhaps have claimed that the boys he had guided and inspired were just so many "hands". But that would have been unfair to them as it would have been so unworthy of himself. "The victories of science are rarely won single handed," he insisted. "No one man should get the credit." His last expressed wish to colleagues was: "If God will spare me another couple of years, maybe we can cure another disease." 

He is not famous, he had an extremely difficult childhood, he passed his matriculation examination in his third attempt, and overall, he had a tragic life worth a biopic like The Man Who Knew Infinity. But the contributions of the Chief of Research of a that small pharma firm in New York, Dr. Yellapragada Subba Rao, in biochemistry and medicine keep performing a million good turns for mankind each day, around the world. And his rather unlikely team reiterated the fact that scientific collaboration knows no boundaries other than those of knowledge itself.