"How Poly Saved the World"
by
Henry A. McKinnell Jr., PhD,
Chairman and CEO of Pfizer Inc. Commencement Address to
The 2004 Graduates of Polytechnic University Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center
New York City
May 27, 2004
Thank you, Mr. President, and welcome everyone...
This ceremony marks the start of Polytechnic's 150th year. As the leader of another Brooklyn-born institution, celebrating our 155th year, let me be the first to welcome you to a very exclusive club. There are not too many institutions that have spanned three centuries. Now, when a close friend has a big birthday, it's customary to bring a present. I'm here with a present...from all of us at Pfizer to our slightly younger...but still very old... friends at Polytechnic. In honor of your 150th year, Pfizer will become a charter member of Poly's Sesquicentennial Heritage Society. This is the capital campaign to celebrate your 150th anniversary...and to prepare the school for another century and a half of progress. Our contributions to this campaign will be in addition to the regular contributions we make to Polytechnic, including a full match of the contributions our employees make. Thank you, Polytechnic, for what you have done for New York...and the world. Speaking of the world, I've given my short speech today a somewhat ambitious title... "How Poly Saved the World." If that sounds far-fetched...listen to my story. To set the stage, remember that as late as 75 years ago, there were hardly any good medicines available. Do you know what the leading cause of death was in the 1920s and 30s? Tuberculosis...and other infections. Then, in the 1930s, came a breakthrough. An English biologist, Alexander Fleming, discovered penicillin...the first true antibiotic. Fleming's discovery was rightly hailed as a miracle. But that miracle came with a catch. Penicillin was hard to make. It was made flask by flask...almost the same way that Fleming made his first batches at his laboratory bench. In the late 1930s, demand for penicillin so greatly outstripped supply...that the finished product was often shipped in armored cars. That was a bad situation that became much worse in the 1940s, when America went to war. Soldiers who should have survived battlefield wounds...died for lack of penicillin. The world's best minds went to work to find a better way to mass produce penicillin. One of those minds belonged to a Poly graduate named Jasper Kane...who by the way, turned one-hundred years old this year. Kane was a chemist working for Pfizer in Brooklyn. In 1942, he offered a bold proposal...to make penicillin in large quantities through the same process Pfizer used to make citric acid...a process called deep-tank fermentation. Kane's idea was risky and radical. To execute the concept, Pfizer would have to stop its most profitable business... making citric acid...and refit its equipment to try to make penicillin. Many people thought that the idea just wouldn't work. In 1943, one senior Pfizer executive wrote his opinion of Kane's idea. "This mold is as temperamental as an opera singer. The yields are low...the isolation is difficult... the extraction is murder... and the purification process itself invites disaster. I implore all of you to think of the risks." The risks were clear. But with Allied soldiers dying by hundreds each day from infections, it was clear that desperate times called for desperate measures. In 1943, Pfizer's board approved Jasper Kane's idea to make penicillin through deep tank fermentation. Pfizer bought an old ice-making works in Brooklyn, and started to build a plant the likes of which the world had never seen. To build that plant, Jasper Kane turned to another Poly graduate, John McKeen. Like some of you, McKeen was starting his second career. He was a skilled electrician who gave up his trade to go to college. He earned a chemical engineering degree at Poly...and then came to Pfizer at roughly half his prior salary to try his hand at management. Kane handed McKeen the challenge of a lifetime. Build a plant in six months, in the middle of a war...with everything from scrap metal to gasoline severely rationed. McKeen scrambled for every rivet and bolt. He found a used elevator in Long Island, and drove all night to Indiana to inspect and secure some secondhand boilers. Piece by piece, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, McKeen's workers built the plant in four months. They were rallied by a sign posted by the then-chairman of Pfizer, John Smith, "The faster you build this plant, the more soldiers we will save" On March 1, 1943, Jasper Kane and John McKeen, two sons of Polytechnic University, made history. They flipped the switches on fourteen 7500-gallon tanks...and by the end of 1943, Pfizer was making 45 million units of penicillin a month. Pfizer shared the deep-tank process with TWENTY other major companies...but none of them could make the medicine as productively as Pfizer could. The genius of Jasper Kane and John McKeen soon made Pfizer the world's largest producer of penicillin. Did that achievement turn the tide of the Second World War? No...brave men and women did that. But cheap and readily available penicillin did save hundreds of thousands of lives during the war...and tens of millions of lives after it. Looking around this room...I venture that some of you here today...owe your lives to Kane's vision of plentiful penicillin. The qualities that make true leaders like Jasper Kane and John McKeen are qualities that you, our graduates, have worked to build at Polytechnic. These qualities include outstanding technological skills, of course, but they also encompass teamwork, vision, compassion, and a resilience and drive that can only be sharpened on the streets of New York City. In preparing to speak with you today, I learned much more about the Poly experience. It seems perfectly matched to a world where technological change will be both massive and unpredictable. Perhaps my business...the same business of Jasper Kane and John McKeen...will benefit most of all from the incoming waves of technological change. We have seen technology completely reshape our quest to discover, develop and produce high-quality medicines. Think about it...when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, a scientist could screen, at best, about a hundred compounds a month against a disease state. Today, Pfizer alone has more than FIVE MILLION compounds in our chemical library, with more than a MILLION of them extensively tested for use in humans. We can screen THOUSANDS of them EVERY HOUR against ANY disease. Last year, when the SARS virus emerged unexpectedly from Asia, we quickly found dozens of compounds to put into full-scale development. Many of the technologies you have mastered...from analytical chemistry to the science of zeolites... will help usher in a golden age of medicine. That golden age can't come soon enough. While infectious disease has largely been conquered in the developed world, the developing world faces grave threats from infections like malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. Today, 6000 people will die of HIV/AIDS. That's the equivalent of TWENTY fully loaded 747s crashing every day. Pfizer and many other research-based pharmaceutical companies are working with great urgency on new treatments for bacterial and viral infections. But the world needs more than new medicines. The world needs new thinking on how to change the lives of the poorest among us. It needs people with technological and management skills to take up the challenge of ensuring progress for all. Consider this...if the cure for AIDS was a glass of clean water a day...the world could not even deliver this simple cure to half of the infected. That's the magnitude of the challenge that lies before you. As you go forward from here, I ask that you keep the urgent needs of the world... squarely in your minds. You may never go into pharmaceuticals, but you should always remember that you are well skilled to help a world where billions of people are trapped by poverty and disease. The needs are great and start right here...in this, the greatest city...in the world's richest nation. Remember that society has invested heavily in you. No matter what you paid for your Polytechnic education...your tuition covered only a small portion of the costs for your education. People who believe in you... and in the promise and power of this school...covered the rest. Now comes your turn to give something back. Teddy Roosevelt said it best: "Do what you can, where you stand, with what you have." You now have one of the finest educations the world can provide. Take a global view of how you can use that education. Understand that "out of sight, out of mind" no longer applies in a world where failed states and frustrated people pose a threat to our homeland...or where a new infectious disease is only a plane ride away. The stories of Jasper Kane and John McKeen speak to us about the power of a few individuals to change the world. They thought boldly about their challenges...inspired others to rally behind a vision, and, in the end, probably saved millions of lives. I don't know what the future holds for you...but I do know that a waiting world so desperately needs all you can give it. I look forward to hearing about great accomplishments from the class of 2004. And I hope that when Poly reaches its bicentennial...just 50 years from now...that you will have the quiet satisfaction of knowing that you gave back to society what society invested in you...and that Poly graduates can, indeed, change the world. Thank you, congratulations...go forward and do great things! ©2004 Polytechnic University
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