1 00:00:11,160 --> 00:00:13,120 People Of Science. Take one. 2 00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:22,520 You started as a doctor but you left medicine for a while. 3 00:00:22,520 --> 00:00:26,880 What brought you back into medicine and public health? Did you miss it? 4 00:00:26,880 --> 00:00:29,160 I missed it immensely, actually. 5 00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:33,440 I stopped medicine and went and was a wife in the diplomatic service. 6 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:37,160 Then I did research strategy in management. 7 00:00:37,160 --> 00:00:41,040 I then became Chief Medical Officer, which is public health. 8 00:00:41,040 --> 00:00:43,800 So actually, as my husband would say, 9 00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:47,640 I'm a political activist who's landed up in government. 10 00:00:47,640 --> 00:00:50,360 And who is the scientist you have chosen? 11 00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:54,240 I'm actually really interested in antibiotic resistance 12 00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:58,160 and penicillin is the original antibiotic. 13 00:00:58,160 --> 00:01:02,680 So I've chosen a combination - Fleming and Florey. 14 00:01:02,680 --> 00:01:05,840 Both of whom were Royal Society fellows. 15 00:01:05,840 --> 00:01:08,720 What do you admire about them? 16 00:01:08,720 --> 00:01:10,560 Start with Fleming. 17 00:01:10,560 --> 00:01:12,600 He comes back from a holiday 18 00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:16,240 and he's thinking of throwing away his microbiology plates, 19 00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:20,880 on which bugs are growing, and one of them showed something odd. 20 00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:24,120 Now most people would throw that away, but not Fleming. 21 00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:25,920 He said, "That's different". 22 00:01:25,920 --> 00:01:29,240 And he explored what it was and he found penicillin. 23 00:01:29,240 --> 00:01:31,240 He would have left it there, 24 00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:34,480 but actually then Florey picked it up 25 00:01:34,480 --> 00:01:38,600 and managed to show that it worked in humans 26 00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:41,720 and it was he who went to the States on Rockefeller money 27 00:01:41,720 --> 00:01:46,200 and found the way to get it produced in order to save lives. 28 00:01:46,200 --> 00:01:50,760 Of all the discoveries that we've chatted about in this series, 29 00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:53,640 Fleming must be the one who's had the biggest impact 30 00:01:53,640 --> 00:01:55,960 on everybody's lives, I suspect. 31 00:01:55,960 --> 00:01:57,760 It's a very direct impact 32 00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:00,800 because modern medicine is underpinned by antibiotics. 33 00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:06,040 Most cancer treatments diminish your immunity, so you need antibiotics. 34 00:02:06,040 --> 00:02:09,320 Modern surgery. Any transplants. 35 00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:12,520 So modern medicine would be lost and would not have happened 36 00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:15,240 if we don't have antibiotics that work. 37 00:02:15,240 --> 00:02:18,680 What do we know or what do you know and respect about them individually? 38 00:02:18,680 --> 00:02:20,640 So let's start with Florey. 39 00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:22,960 One of the wonderful things about Florey was 40 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:26,680 he knew not only his science and how to build this 41 00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:29,920 multidisciplinary team that was well before its time, 42 00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:32,960 but how to go out and get money and make it happen. 43 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:35,040 That's inspirational. 44 00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:39,120 And Fleming. What's the sense of the scientist? 45 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:43,560 I like the fact that if you read about him, he was very understated. 46 00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:47,080 He did, in his Nobel Prize acceptance, 47 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:51,720 highlight that it wasn't serendipity and it was a team. 48 00:02:51,720 --> 00:02:55,520 But of course, for the work I do on antimicrobial resistance, 49 00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:58,080 it's also very important that he understood 50 00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:01,840 that resistance could happen, would happen 51 00:03:01,840 --> 00:03:06,080 and he described in his Nobel Prize lecture how it would kill people. 52 00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:11,880 This is a wonderful couple of montages 53 00:03:11,880 --> 00:03:14,040 of the actual Nobel ceremony. 54 00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:17,920 "Beware of breeding outlaw germs." 55 00:03:17,920 --> 00:03:20,680 So that's the resistance bit, isn't it? 56 00:03:20,680 --> 00:03:22,520 Yes. "Unskilled use". 57 00:03:22,520 --> 00:03:25,800 "Its unskilled use may develop deadly microbes 58 00:03:25,800 --> 00:03:28,280 "the wonder drug can't cure." 59 00:03:28,280 --> 00:03:30,600 So there it is. And that's 1945. 60 00:03:30,600 --> 00:03:33,560 So that came after his speech when he warned it 61 00:03:33,560 --> 00:03:35,600 and they've picked it straight up. 62 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:37,320 That's interesting, isn't it? 63 00:03:37,320 --> 00:03:39,920 That's the bit that they focus on straightaway. 64 00:03:39,920 --> 00:03:42,320 Yes. That's fascinating. 65 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:46,160 By 2050, if we take no action, 66 00:03:46,160 --> 00:03:49,720 10 million people each year across the world 67 00:03:49,720 --> 00:03:53,280 will die of antibiotic resistant infections. 68 00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:56,200 That compares with eight million dying at the moment of cancer. 69 00:03:57,480 --> 00:04:00,800 I want to know why that is. Why do you think... It's a market failure. 70 00:04:00,800 --> 00:04:04,480 No new class of antibiotics has come into clinical practice 71 00:04:04,480 --> 00:04:06,880 for the last 30 years. 72 00:04:06,880 --> 00:04:09,240 Everyone thought, "We've cracked it", 73 00:04:09,240 --> 00:04:13,160 and they forgot about Fleming's advice or premonition 74 00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:15,800 that people would die because of resistance. 75 00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:20,200 So part of my role now is trying to reinvigorate the market. 76 00:04:20,200 --> 00:04:23,440 I know you work in government now, with government. 77 00:04:23,440 --> 00:04:28,640 I think it's a very valuable idea that actually politics, 78 00:04:28,640 --> 00:04:31,960 science, the whole thing really is there to do good. 79 00:04:31,960 --> 00:04:34,680 To make people's lives better ultimately. 80 00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:36,240 I went into medicine 81 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:38,760 because I wanted to make the world a better place 82 00:04:38,760 --> 00:04:41,720 and so of course I look to people like Fleming and Florey 83 00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:44,600 because they have made the world a better place. 84 00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:49,240 I recently was given the Lister Memorial Medal. I was the 16th. 85 00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:54,000 And I couldn't believe it to find that the first was actually Fleming. 86 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:57,640 And I thought here I am following in his footsteps, 87 00:04:57,640 --> 00:04:59,880 not doing the science, 88 00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:02,560 but trying to make sure modern science is done 89 00:05:02,560 --> 00:05:04,960 to solve a massive crisis. 90 00:05:04,960 --> 00:05:09,880 So Fleming didn't entirely solve the problem. 91 00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:11,760 No. 92 00:05:11,760 --> 00:05:15,280 He saved a lot of lives and he showed us the way forward. 93 00:05:15,280 --> 00:05:18,160 And he predicted antibiotic resistance, 94 00:05:18,160 --> 00:05:20,680 which I think is before his time. 95 00:05:20,680 --> 00:05:22,560 I wish I'd known him.