WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090226/CENSUSLOGO )

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4: FIRST U.S. ANTIBIOTIC

Profile America -- Wednesday, November 4th. This year's Nobel prizes were announced last month, and the award ceremonies will be held in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway next month. In 1952, the prize for medicine was awarded for the discovery of the first antibiotic produced in the U.S. -- streptomycin. The breakthrough medicine was developed by a Ukranian immigrant, Dr. Selman Waksman, and four students in 1944 at Rutgers University in New Jersey. It went into production later that year. Prescriptions -- including antibiotics -- cost patients just over $231 billion a year -- about $476 for each American. You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.

Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 4998

National Inventors Hall of Fame

Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009, t. 126, 127

Profile America is produced by the Public Information Office of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on a monthly CD or on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look under the "Newsroom" button).

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau