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Medicine prize launches Nobel season next week

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 September 2005, 09:42 CDT

By Patrick Lannin

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The Nobel prize for medicine, called by past winners both an honor and a distraction from research, heralds the start next week of the century-old season of awards founded in the will of the inventor of dynamite.

The winner of the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.3 million) is to be announced on Monday, October 3 at 0930 GMT.

The physics prize follows on Tuesday, chemistry a day later, the literature prize is usually announced on the Thursday of the same week. The peace prize is announced in Oslo on the Friday and finally economics on the following Monday.

Winning brings prestige and, with it, lots of commitments.

"For me, it means being chosen as a representative of science, an ambassador," said American Leland Hartwell, joint winner in 2001 for work on the life cycle of cells.

One of his two co-winners, Briton Tim Hunt, agreed it was an honor, but added: "The one thing that it does not do is make life easier as a researcher."

The obligation to give so many talks and make appearances at conferences and schools meant that "for a while you are, in effect, sterilised scientifically speaking."

Few of the winners of the medicine prize, first given in 1901 to Germany's Emil von Behring for work on serum therapy, have become household names outside the world of science.

Some exceptions are Briton Sir Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 prize with Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey for their discovery of penicillin and its curative effect, and in 1904 Russian Ivan Pavlov -- or perhaps his dogs. They were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell.

AVOIDING CONTROVERSY

The prize-giving Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute of medical research has tended to avoid controversy in its awards -- a rare exception being the case of Portuguese scientist Egas Moniz, the inventor of the lobotomy.

U.S. relatives of patients who had treatment, which sought to calm mentally ill patients by severing nerve fibres in the brain, have demanded the prize be withdrawn. They say it led to injury or death for their kin.

One pointer to who might be the next laureate is that many have previously won the prestigious U.S. Lasker Award.

This year's Lasker winners, Canadians Ernest McCulloch and James Till, carried out work that set the stage for all current research into adult and embryonic stem cells.

Research into these master cells sparked controversy due to objections about using human embryos as a source for stem cells.

Doctors hope one day to use embryonic stem cells as a source of transplants to treat diseases such as cancer and Parkinson's.

While the choice of research areas honored tends to avoid controversy, laureates themselves are not above rolling up the sleeves of their lab coats for a fight.

In 2003, American Raymond Damadian took out adverts in the press demanding a share of the prize won by American Paul Lauterbur and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield for their work in magnetic resonance imaging for pictures of internal organs.

No noses were put out of joint by 2004's prize to Americans Richard Axel and Linda Buck for work on the sense of smell.

Apart from the prestige, the money is nice as well.

"My family lives in significantly greater comfort than before," said Hunt.

Source: REUTERS

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