Sir Alexander Fleming Interview | WKY-TV | OMRF

Well, Sir Alexander, how did you happen to get interested in the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in the first place? Well, in the beginning of 1949, I never heard of it. And then, about that time, I gets a telephone call in the evening, I was sitting quietly at home, and I got a telephone call, and I answered the telephone, and somebody said he was Hugh Payne, and he wanted me to come to Oklahoma to dedicate a medical research foundation. You were in England then? Yes. I'd never had a telephone call that many thousand miles away. But even with that surprise, I was scotch enough not to say yes immediately. I waited the next morning to think about it, and then I cabled yes. Well, that was fine. I think it was very fortunate that I said yes to Hugh Payne's call. Well, indeed, it was fortunate for us. Well, you saw the foundation when it was a hole in the ground, and you've seen it now since it has been completed, you've gone through it. What do you think of it now, and what do you think is its job to, its work to do for the benefit of people it likes? Well, I saw it when it was a hole in the ground, but that was all I saw of the material part of the foundation. But I saw the spirit that was behind it, and I thought it was bound to be a success. And a thing like this has got two sorts of values for the people. There's a direct value, and there's an indirect value. Now, research has done a great deal to make this state a fine state. See, it's brought you better and cheaper ways of purifying your oil. You've got better methods of exploiting the richness of your soil. And you've got rid of a lot of cattle diseases and other livestock diseases. And in the last year or two, the antibiotics have been making the chickens and pigs go quicker. But medical research has freed us from a lot of scourges, plague, cholera, smallpox, many others. And if it's given free hand and more facilities, it may one day deal with cancer, polio, and the other things of which we are very much afraid. See, it's made childbirth safe, and it's enormously diminished infantile mortality. The child's got a quicker, better chance of growing up if he's born. Now, the work done in the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation directly leads to a longer life and less suffering. This special program, I think, is heart disease and cancer and arthritis. But when they're working at that, there'll be some other things bob up, same as penicillin bobbed up when I was doing something else. Indirect value is the increase in the morale of the people of Oklahoma. It's a state rich in many material ways. The successful Medical Research Foundation helps to give a moral uplift, especially to those people who contribute materially good. If you've contributed, then you naturally have something of a fatherly interest in it. And then you feel good when you see your child growing up nicely. When I was here before, I remember warning the authorities against spending all their money on Marble Hall and show. Well, I've seen the foundation now, and I've seen the laboratories, and I saw that there were good workshops with nice equipment and not too much of the Marble Hall, just enough to make it good to see. Well, that's fine, and we're happy to have had you with us today, Sir Alexander, and not only happy, we're honored. As your countryman, Sir Henry Taylor, wrote a good many years ago, the world knows nothing of its greatest men. And we in Oklahoma feel that we have learned a little bit about one of the world's greatest men.