Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello Receive Nobel Prize in Medicine
Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello “have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine” earlier today for “for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes”.
Before I will use an excerpt of the NYT’s article explaining this process and its importance, I cannot help but object to the use of the word ‘won’ in this context. Since when is the Nobel Prize a race? Since when is it an ordinary contest? It is not. It is a means of honoring those who do very valuable work, in different fields of work and to encourage more research. People receive the Nobel Prize, or get honored with it.
It is not, or should, be considered some kind of ordinary competition.
Okay, from the article:
The process, called RNA interference, also is being studied for treating such conditions as hepatitis virus infection and heart disease. It is already widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes.
Fire, 47, of Stanford University, and Mello, 45, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in a 1998 paper.
”This year’s Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information,” the institute said.
Erna Moller, a member of the Nobel committee, said their research helped shed new light on a complicated process that had confused researchers for years.
[...]
Genes produce their effect by sending molecules called messenger RNA to the protein-making machinery of a cell. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction or inactivation of RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.
Congrats to both; they deserve it.
4 Responses to “Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello Receive Nobel Prize in Medicine”
It is only a non-competition in your idealistic mind, I’m afraid.
One of my science professors is friends with a Nobel Prize winner and has related some interesting ancedotes to me. Believe me, these people fight tooth and nail for recognition of their accomplishments. Many of them spend there entire careers in pursuit of just the Prize and cultivating friendship with big-wigs in their respective sciences to get that Prize is a must in most cases. Not that the science isn’t great, it is world class, but there is far more politics behind it than you might imagine.
It shouldn’t be that way. But it is.
Warning, going to sound like my mother here…
People really have to degenerate everything. Nothing can stay pure………
People really have to degenerate everything. Nothing can stay pure………
Lol. If that was aimed at me, it should be aimed instead at the Nobel science prizes’ selection process.
Still, it could be always be worse: it could be as bad as the selection process for the Nobel Peace Prize, an almost meaningless piece of garbage.
They’ve given it to the sinister Kissinger and the evil Le Duc Tho. They’ve given it to Arafat. They’ve given it to the best friend of left-wing autocrats everywhere, Jimmy Carter. They’ve given it to some Irish lady who recently mentioned how she would love to kill Bush (in front of school children). They’ve even nominated mass murderer Tookie Williams for it (repeatedly).
Given the cast of characters who’ve either obtained the prize or been nominated for it, does the Nobel Peace Prize really mean anything these days?
We’ve come a long and unfortunate way from the time when the average Nobel Peace Prize winner was someone along the lines of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Schweitzer, or Linus Pauling.
Tommy, LOL, it was not aimed at you of course.
I agree with you about the Nobel Peace Prize: it is in serious danger of becoming one big joke. Next thing up: Ahmadinejad for not causing an all-out war with Israel…
Seriously though: the Nobel Committee should treat the Peace ‘Prize’ very carefully. Sadly, they have wandered of the path of honoring true men or women of peace with it.