The Nobel Prize 2008 for discovering those nasty invisibles

It is one night in 1850 and you were about to sleep. You have not been feeling well all day. You have been going to the bathroom so many times all day and it is not to shower. Your family calls a doctor and in those days, the doctors always came to the patient. If your doctor happened to be William Brownrigg, who was famous in those times, he would have tied your arm to let blood out until you feel even more woozy. After that, he would have left this diagnosis: “bad digestion, arising from a strong strain of melancholic humor, which often affects those who use thick foods, hard to digest, who wear themselves out with strenuous drinking bouts or who are weighed down all day with cares and sadness or live a sedentary life or, finally, those who apply themselves too earnestly to their studies, especially at night.” 

That previous quote is from a book by John Waller called “The Discovery of the Germ.” If you had lived in 1850, before scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch made revolutionary breakthroughs in proving that invisible organisms can cause diseases that can be passed around, then that will be the medical note on your chart. It is a far cry from what TV diagnostician Dr. Gregory House comes up with but hey, the note did say, you have “a strong strain of melancholic humor” and even if not medically helpful, it sounds really eloquent like an entry in a diary.

Waller’s book distinguishes the period between 1880 and 1900 as a revolutionary time for medicine because that was when all the first discoveries about “germs” occurred. He noted Pasteur’s declaration in 1888 of “a new science being born” since “it has caused a veritable revolution in our knowledge of virulent and contagious diseases.” One hundred twenty years later, the Nobel Prize winners in Medicine continue to carry the flame of that revolutionary time. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2008 was given to Harald zur Hausen and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier.

Harald zur Hausen is awarded for his discovery of “human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer.” He was born 1936 in Germany, a German citizen, and a medical doctor in the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. He was professor emeritus and former chairman and scientific director of the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany. His work is revolutionary because his work which he started in 1972 on a family of viruses called Human Papilloma Viruses (HPV) proved that cervical cancer, the killer disease of all women next only to breast cancer, is caused by certain types of HPV. While many people are now probably aware that there is now a vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer caused by HPV, very few may know that they have Dr. Hausen to thank for that. He did not develop the vaccine for cervical cancer. He wanted to and even approached a drug company which even gave them initial research funding but the drug company later assessed that there was no market for such a vaccine. I can’t help but wonder why half the world’s population, who are women did not seem enough of a market for that drug company. Someone else later developed the vaccine.

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were awarded for their discovery of “human immunodeficiency virus.” Before they discovered it, people just generally called it a “plague” — some sort of a punishment disease for morals gone awry. This virus that causes what we commonly call HIV-AIDS belongs to a tribe of viruses that encodes itself in the DNA of its hosts, attacking the host’s immune system, rendering him or her unable to fight it. Sinoussi and Montagnier led their research teams to develop therapeutic vaccines which now enable those infected with the virus to live with the virus without falling sick from it.

Sinoussi was born 1947 in France, a French citizen, with a PhD in virology from Institut Pasteur, Garches, France and also a professor and director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, Virology Department of Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. I think it was a nice coincidence that Sinoussi was in the Pasteur Institute in Cambodia when she got the traditional call from the Nobel Prize Press.

Luc Montagnier was born 1932 in France, a French citizen, has a PhD in virology from the University of Paris and a professor emeritus and director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, Paris, France. He now tirelessly works on research so that a combination of drugs could help patients always get ahead of the virus and defend themselves from the virus.

Thanks to scientists like the Nobel Prize winners for Medicine and Physiology this year, your “strain of melancholic humor” need not be the only thing blamed for your bad tummy or your other sick parts. But for those people plagued with a disease characterized by Brownrigg then as applying themselves “too earnestly to their studies, especially at night” and you find that indeed it is a virus that makes you do that, by all means, do spread that virus that makes you really think, preferably toward the direction where we house our politicians.

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