Nobel Prize For Medicine Awarded, Physics Soon To Follow

Nobel Prize season is here again, and the first award for Physiology or Medicine was split between two virologists who discovered HIV and one who demonstrated that a virus causes cervical cancer. Coming soon is the announcement for Physics. Look to the right for a chance to pit your selection wit against the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with a poll for which scientific achievement deserves the prize. Front runners, according to Reuters, are; Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, discovers of graphene, Vera Rubin, provider of the best evidence yet of dark matter, and Roger Penrose and Dan Shechtman, discoverers of Penrose tilings and quasicrystals.

Comments

Why isn't Robert Gallo credited for HIV discovery?

[slashdog]

In the 80's Robert Gallo was celebrated as the discoverer of HIV and that, oh yeah, maybe

some French scientists helped too. Turns out Mr. Gallo either intentionally or mistakenly

(through cross-contamination in a sloppy lab) cultivated a sample of the French-discovered

strain of the virus. Even after he should have realized a mistake, he misled people and

caused the United States blood supply to use a much poorer HIV test (than the French one)

and as a result people needlessly died. His claims of original discovery ultimately fell

apart because HIV mutates with amazing rapidity, and so his HIV strains were traceable to

the French one his so closely matched.

The book "Science Fictions" by John Crewdson is worth your time to read. It's a long read,

not an easy read, but I got hooked.

Have you wondered why some less technically talented coworkers are able to influence

management and, even worse, make you the fall guy when things go wrong? I think this book

gave me insight into that.

If Mr. Gallo had only half the talent for science as he did for obfuscation, he would've

been a great scientist indeed.

Re:1993 HBO Movie

[R2.0]

I did a paper on some of these topics in 1990. In short:
1) the American scientist was a dickhead
2) Even at the time of his "discovery", it was suspected that the lab had stolen the sample from the French - I think they settled on "contamination" so that it wouldn't turn into a political incident (this happened at NIH)
3) The elephant in the room was money - there was a metric fuckton of money to be made for the people to develop a test for HIV that could be applied to the blood supply. The French and the American basically split it.
4) The American scientist made out like a bandidt - not only did he recieve credit where he shouldn't have, the NIH built him a WHOLE BUILDING to be his sandbox.

It is some small measure of justice that the Nobel committee awarded the prise thusly. Too bad the people who award the non-scientific prizes have no such measure of judgment.