In 1951, space-age drug Terramycin promised a utopian future: children who would once have died could now dream of becoming astronauts, crops were protected from light and animals grew to twice the size. But the drive to use such wonder drugs for everything actually caused a modern nightmare of drug resistance.
Drugs, space travel and the ‘age of promise’
Words by Alice White
- In pictures
1 of 8
In the 1950s, a decade before the first human space flight and the first ‘Star Trek’ film, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer claimed that it was “the age of promise and new frontiers are waiting”. The broad-spectrum antibiotic oxytetracycline, which it had just produced with the trade name Terramycin, seemed to give every reason for optimism.
2 of 8
In this marketing film, we are introduced to the story of Terramycin via a poorly little boy who wants to play with his spaceship and pretend to be an astronaut. Being unwell is “very hard for a boy” but luckily, he has access to antibiotics. Not only this, a news clipping helps to show that his dreams of space are becoming a real possibility: Sputnik was launched the year after the film was made.
3 of 8
The narrator admits that the mechanism of Terramycin is “still a scientific mystery”, but confidently proclaims that they’re making the drug radioactive to help find out. After all, “atomic energy, the most incredible of our accomplishments, is now enlisted in medicine’s search for longer, healthier life” via radiation therapy for things like cancer.
4 of 8
Why the hard sell? Men in white coats had helped to create nuclear weapons and caused medical scandals, which meant that some people were very suspicious of the medical world. Historian Robert Bud has argued that antibiotics like Terramycin “served as an icon of scientific medicine, an emblem of the pharmaceutical industry’s beneficence, and a politically charged exemplar of good science”.
5 of 8
We’re shown how Terramycin was discovered in some dirt and how it’s mass-produced in a factory. Pfizer spent twice as much on marketing Terramycin as it did on discovering and developing the medication. Pfizer reaped the rewards, as Terramycin’s sales helped to transform the company into a pharmaceutical power.
6 of 8
Pfizer was able to market the drug not only to doctors, but also to vets and farmers. The narrator boasts of antibiotic use “extending into areas beyond disease” and shows how an agricultural variant of the drug was being used to prevent disease…
7 of 8
… and to grow chickens to full size far faster and on less feed, having a “spectacular” effect on the United States’ farm economy. Agricultural antibiotic Agrimycin is still in use today. Such widespread use of antibiotics has led to increasing antibiotic resistance, and the WHO warns that: “Without urgent action, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill.”
8 of 8
In ‘The Age of Promise’ the narrator is confident that the future of humanity and medicine will continue on an upward trajectory. When the film was made, a boy who once might have died instead merely faced some time in bed dreaming of space. Today though, the future of human health and of the continued efficacy of antibiotics are now in question precisely because ‘wonder drugs’ such as Terramycin were used for every possible application.
About the author
Alice White
Alice is a digital editor and Wikimedian for Wellcome Collection. Before joining Wellcome, she researched frogs, moustaches, psychiatry in World War II, and British science-fiction fans.