What do you consider the two most significant medication of the 20th century? It doesn’t have to have been discovered or invented in that century. The question is deliberately open to interpretation, in the same way Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”
My choices are penicillin (which I’m aware is a large group of drugs) and smallpox vaccine.
btm said:
What do you consider the two most significant medication of the 20th century? It doesn’t have to have been discovered or invented in that century. The question is deliberately open to interpretation, in the same way Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”My choices are penicillin (which I’m aware is a large group of drugs) and smallpox vaccine.
Alcohol in any of its wonderous forms.
bob(from black rock) said:
btm said:
What do you consider the two most significant medication of the 20th century? It doesn’t have to have been discovered or invented in that century. The question is deliberately open to interpretation, in the same way Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”My choices are penicillin (which I’m aware is a large group of drugs) and smallpox vaccine.
Alcohol in any of its wonderous forms.
The Pill.
btm said:
What do you consider the two most significant medication of the 20th century? It doesn’t have to have been discovered or invented in that century. The question is deliberately open to interpretation, in the same way Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”My choices are penicillin (which I’m aware is a large group of drugs) and smallpox vaccine.
Wonder if alcohol can be made from penicillin mould?
bob(from black rock) said:
btm said:
What do you consider the two most significant medication of the 20th century? It doesn’t have to have been discovered or invented in that century. The question is deliberately open to interpretation, in the same way Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”My choices are penicillin (which I’m aware is a large group of drugs) and smallpox vaccine.
Wonder if alcohol can be made from penicillin mould?
Taking penicillins and quinine as givens, and old, let’s consider some more recent ones.
My immediate thought is SSRIs, initially Prozac. If morality is based on “the least unhappiness of the greatest number” then SSRIs win. Prozac was discovered in 1972 and entered medical use in 1986.
Insulin is another big one. Discovered in 1921, first marketed in 1950, first synthesised in 1982.
Arguments can also be presented for selecting medicines that prevent heart attack, particularly the statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs that are top sellers. As a side issue, you may be interested to know that the first statin discovered was produced naturally by a penicillin mould, but it was deadly. The first non-deadly one was discovered in 1978 and first marketed in 1987.
“The hypothyroid medication levothyroxine continues to be the USAs most prescribed drug, and the antipsychotic aripiprazole continues to have the highest sales”. Levothyroxine was first synthesised in 1927. Aripiprazole was discovered in 1988 and approved by the FDA in 2002.
Surely the polio vaccine would have to at least make a short list
>>Taking penicillins and quinine as givens,
Quinine??
Peak Warming Man said:
>>Taking penicillins and quinine as givens,Quinine??
Tonic water is important.
Peak Warming Man said:
>>Taking penicillins and quinine as givens,Quinine??
Cant make a decent g&t without it…
> Alcohol in any of its wonderous forms.
Not claiming that any of these is “most significant” but let’s have a quick look at some anaesthetics other than alcohol.
Morphine – 1805
Thiopental (Pentothal) – c 1929
Pethidine – synthesised 1939
Lidocaine – first clinical use in 1944
Halothane – first clinical use in 1956
Methoxyflurane – first human trials in 1960
Ketamine – first human trials in 1964, in use in 1970
Enflurane – first human trials in 1966
Isoflurane – first clinical use in 1972
Etomidate – developed 1964, introduced 1972
Propofol – discovered 1976 but pulled from the market before reintroduction in 1986
Desflurane – first clinical use in 1992
Sevoflurane – first clinical use in 1994
Peak Warming Man said:
>>Taking penicillins and quinine as givens,Quinine??
Yes, quinine. Malaria is still the number two killer disease in the world today. In 2015, there were roughly 212 million malaria cases and an estimated 429,000 malaria deaths. Just wait until malaria arrives back in Australia and you’ll take notice.
The only worse disease is AIDS, with an estimated 36.7 million cases and 1.1 million AIDS related deaths in 2015. So, I suppose, anti-retroviral drugs such as AZT have a good claim to being the most significant medications of the 20th century. AZT was discovered in 1964 and first approved in 1986 – which is far too long a delay imho.