If that were all he had done, Bennett would still be living the quiet life of a pensioner. Hospitals, where most people are infected with staph, already have lotions that can kill the bug. The problem is, the instant that nurses or doctors finish washing their hands, they’re vulnerable to getting infected again. Bennett’s cream keeps the hands from being reinfected–for hours.
How did he do come up with the magic formula? In 2001, his wife, Heather, a post-office clerk, came down with dermatitis. Doctors couldn’t cure it. Brian, who had flunked biology at school, went to work in his garage. He bought a barrel of barrier cream, which protects the skin from chemicals, and, based on what he could cull from library books and guesswork, began adding ingredients: aloe vera, evening-primrose oil, triclosan (an antibacterial agent), silicon and so on. Since he didn’t have an industrial mixer, he put the ingredients in a barrel and, with the help of his two sons, rolled it up and down the driveway 40 times.
Three months later Bennett came up with a batch that banished his wife’s dermatitis in a week–and it stayed banished. “I was very lucky to find this formula, which tolerates so many different things and carries on working,” he says. He gave samples to friends and relatives who had various skin ailments. They reported positive results.
Bennett pestered the staff of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham into doing some lab tests. Then the hospital conducted a clinical trial using 102 staff members as guinea pigs. The results were excellent. Hospital workers dubbed the lotion “the invisible glove.” Now Dr. Tony Worthington, the clinical-researcher who undertook the first clinical trial, wants to test the lotion on renal-dialysis patients, who are at high risk of infection.
Bennett recently patented the lotion, which also appears to cure athlete’s foot, psoriasis and acne. Pharmaceutical companies are offering to fund the trials. In all the excitement, though, Bennett remains resolutely humble. “It’s not rocket science,” he says. “I was just very lucky.”
