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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, October 29, 2017
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IF YOU were hoping to make half a billion US dollars but got not a single cent, how would you feel?
In 1996, fellow journalist Florence Hibionada introduced me to a Manila-based ABS-CBN TV team – a reporter and two cameramen – who would like to interview me and the relatives of the late Dr. Abelardo Aguilar, who died frustrated for not having received the amount he was claiming. Since I had personally known the doctor, the TV crew would like to interview me for an episode in Noli de Castro’s Magandang Gabi Bayan. My role was to appeal to a drug manufacturer to pay the heirs of the doctor his unpaid “royalty” in the amount of five hundred million US dollars.
I did as instructed before the TV camera at the coffee shop of Amigo Terrace Hotel. This done, the TV crew left to interview the children of the deceased in Dumangas, Iloilo.
Dr. Abelardo Aguilar discovered the antibiotic erythromycin in 1949 from soil fungi he had extracted at the back of an Iloilo City cemetery. He brought the specimen to his employer, the Manila office of the United States-based drug Eli Lily.
Finding antibacterial properties in the discovery, Eli Lily in 1952 cultured it into erythromycin – medicine for respiratory tract infections, venereal diseases and urinary tract infections – under the brand name Ilosone. “Ilo” stands for Iloilo City as the drug’s source.
Although the antibiotic earned billions of dollars for Eli Lily worldwide, for which Aguilar hoped to gain US $500 million in royalty, he remained unpaid until his death in 1993.
Unfortunately, Magandang Gabi never aired the Aguilar episode. Since ABS-CBN had spent thousands of pesos for the Iloilo trip of the crew, rumor spread like wildfire in Dumangas, hometown of Aguilar, that Eli Lily had “hushed” show host Noli de Castro.
Aside from Dr. Abelardo Aguilar, many other Filipino talents have missed the recognition and fortune they deserve for their pioneering work.
Remember Daniel Dingel? He was the one who stunned televiewers with a live presentation of his invention – a car fueled by water. Where is he now? Has he been hushed also?
Dingel’s engine had a reactor that drew electricity from a 12-volt car battery to split the ordinary tap water into hydrogen and oxygen components. The formula HHO (2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen) could then be used to power the car engine.
The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) shrugged off Dingel’s invention as a “hoax” that did not merit a look. Dingel hit back, accusing DOST of conspiracy with oil companies to prevent his invention from being mass-produced, since the government would stand to lose oil taxes from it.
The earliest frustrated inventor we heard about was Agapito Flores, the person behind the fluorescent lamp. The sketchy, passed-on information we have of him is that he first showed his invention to President Manuel Luis Quezon, who unfortunately paid no attention. General Electric allegedly bought the patent to his invention for a pittance and introduced it to the United States market in 1938.
Remember the Lunar Rover that American astronaut Neil Armstrong rode on while exploring the moon in 1969? That vehicle, called the Moon Buggy, was conceptualized by Eduardo San Juan, an engineering graduate of Mapua Institute of Technology who worked for Lockheed Corp. Alas, however, it’s not his name but “a group of space engineers” that was listed as the inventor of the Moon Buggy in American scientific journals.
Computers would still be operating in slow motion without the invention of Diosdado Banatao. A native of Iguig, Cagayan, this electrical engineer developed the first single-chip graphical interface accelerator that makes personal computers run faster.
No individual name has been credited for the invention of the jeepney in the 1940s after World War II. Whoever he was, he first did it from a leftover Willis jeep left by an American soldier after the war. (hvego@gmail.com/PN)
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