Jewish Invention Myths: Streptomycin
The invention of streptomycin – the first effective antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis and plague – has long been heralded as a ‘jewish achievement’ with the Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded to Selman Waksman in 1952 for his ‘discovery’ of streptomycin in 1943/1944.
As ‘MNews’ writes:
‘Selman Abraham Waksman – Streptomycin
Selman Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of antibiotics as the most effective medicine, including streptomycin, the first effective treatment for tuberculosis.’ (1)
The problem with this superficially solid jewish invention/achievement is that the story commonly presented has long been known to be wrong and that Waksman’s role in the discovery of streptomycin is hardly that which he – and the jews in general – have claimed for him(self).
The first correction is that is now commonly argued that streptomycin was actually discovered by Waksman’s student Albert Schatz on 13th October 1943. (2) Schatz was jewish like Waksman, (3) but his role was suppressed by Waksman for reasons that still remain unclear. (4)
Doris Janes Ralston – who worked in the same lab and actually provided the bacteria to Schatz – (5) agreed and stressed that:
‘Dr. Schatz's role has been largely ignored.’ (6)
However, Ralston also stated that:
‘Over the years, the story of streptomycin's discovery has been terribly garbled.’ (7)
Schatz’s quotation of Ralston is genuine enough but Ralston likely meant the comment to be far broader than the interpretation offered by Schatz. The reason this is likely to be true is because there is another non-jewish woman (like Ralston) directly involved in the discovery of streptomycin in October 1943.
That woman was Elizabeth Bugie (later Elizabeth Gregory).
It was Bugie not Schatz who performed the actual tests on the bacteria provided by Ralston which discovered streptomycin on 19th October 1943. (8) Bugie along with Schatz and Waksman was credited as a co-author on the January 1944 paper in ‘Experimental Biology and Medicine’ announcing the discovery. (9)
Then all of a sudden Bugie disappears from the equation in the 1945 patent application – granted in 1948 - which credits Schatz and Waksman but not her. (10)
It is now believed that Bugie was deliberately excluded from the patent by Waksman ‘because she would just get married’. (11)
Then Waksman proceeded to further exclude Schatz from credit and the agreed royalties for the discovery of streptomycin, which resulted in Schatz taking legal action against Waksman in 1950 for the agreed 20 percent of the patent royalties in which action Bugie did not participate. (12)
Schatz subsequently won the legal case and Waksman then blackballed Schatz’s future career after losing the case and settling out of court for $120,000 in return for the patent rights. (13)
Waksman was then awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize for Medicine for ‘his’ discovery of Streptomycin and was given sole credit by the Nobel Prize Committee. (14) This has since been heavily criticized with – for example - ‘The Lancet’ commenting in November 2005 that Schatz’s role was massively underplayed, and the Nobel Prize committee committed a grave error in judgement. (15)
Further strong evidence of Bugie’s significant (and even majority) contribution to the discovery of streptomycin has since emerged. (16)
Waksman himself acknowledged this as early as 1950 when in fighting Schatz in court over the patent rights he admitted that:
‘It just happened that Schatz was concerned with some of the early isolations and tests, but… Miss Elizabeth Bugie and Miss H. Christine Reilly have made as important contributions, if not more so, in the discovery and development of streptomycin than Schatz has done.’ (17)
The fact that Waksman acknowledged Bugie’s role as a way to fight Schatz’s claims are important precisely because Bugie was also awarded 0.2 percent of the patent royalties by the court but this low number doesn’t seem to have been related to her contribution itself but rather because she was a woman (and we can also speculate because she wasn’t jewish). (18)
The common counterargument that:
‘Betty Bugie submitted an affidavit -- that was submitted, of course, by the attorney of the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation -- that she did not have anything to do with the discovery of streptomycin.’ (19)
While true is debunked by Bugie’s own private papers at the time which have now become available and show the opposite that she was very closely involved with the discovery. (20)
Bugie is also reported to have later commented that:
‘If women's lib had been around, my name would have been on the patent.’ (21)
This is further supported by the fact that we now know Waksman had Bugie do most of the work not Schatz. (22)
While this isn’t conclusive per se it does strongly suggest that the truth about the discovery of streptomycin is very different from that claimed by jews and that what we can conjecturally state occurred was that Elizabeth Bugie discovered streptomycin, Schatz likely confirmed what she found and Waksman put his name to the discovery as the head of the laboratory.
Waksman and Schatz then wrote Bugie out of the discovery in the 1945 patent application then Waksman turned on Schatz and took sole credit for the discovery (leading to his 1952 Nobel Prize for Medicine) between 1945 and 1950 resulting in Schatz’s successful lawsuit against Bugie with Bugie being browbeaten by lawyers for Rutgers University into signing away her rights in her affidavit in exchange for some unspecified benefit in return.
Thus we can that while jews may have contributed and been credited with the discovery of streptomycin; the real discoverer was very likely a largely unknown non-jewish woman called Elizabeth Bugie.
References
(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(2) William Kingston, 2004, ‘Streptomycin, Schatz v. Waksman, and the Balance of Credit for Discovery’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 441–462
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schatz_(scientist)#Early_life_and_education
(4) Albert Schatz, 1993, ‘The True Story of the Development of Streptomycin’, Actinomycetes, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 27-39
(5) https://asmscience.org/content/book/10.1128/9781555819545.chap34
(6) Quoted in Schatz., Op. Cit., p. 27
(7) Ibid.
(8) https://asmscience.org/content/book/10.1128/9781555819545.chap34
(9) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-55-14461
(10) https://patents.google.com/patent/US2449866
(11) https://asmscience.org/content/book/10.1128/9781555819545.chap34
(12) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/nov/02/research.highereducation
(13) Ibid.
(14) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1952/summary/
(15) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(05)70245-0/fulltext
(16) https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/selmanwaksman.html
(17) Ibid.
(18) https://web.archive.org/web/20211129213617/http://old.post-gazette.com/obituaries/20010414gregory2.asp
(19) Ibid.
(20) Ibid.; http://www.scientistafoundation.com/discovher-science/elizabeth-bugie-the-invisible-woman-in-the-discovery-of-streptomycin
(21) http://www.scientistafoundation.com/discovher-science/elizabeth-bugie-the-invisible-woman-in-the-discovery-of-streptomycin
(22) https://web.archive.org/web/20211129213617/http://old.post-gazette.com/obituaries/20010414gregory2.asp