3 Scientists Share Nobel For Parastic Disease Breakthroughs

The Australian reports that a trio of scientists (hailing from from Japan, China, and Ireland) has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work in treating parasitic diseases. Irish scientist William Campbell (currently research fellow emeritus at New Jersey's Drew University), and Japanese biochemist Satoshi Omura, were awarded half of the monetary award for their work in defeating roundworm infections; the drug they developed as a result, Avermectin, has helped drastically lower two devastating diseases -- river blindness and lymphatic filariasis -- and has shown promise in treating other ailments as well. The other half of the prize has been awarded to Chinese researcher Youyou Tu, who discovered a novel antimalarial drug based on her research into traditional herbal medicines. (Also at The Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times, and elsewhere. The awards were live-blogged by The Guardian.)

Comments

Re: In Other News:

[HydroPhonic]

Parasite found feasting on "I" from headline

3 Scientists Share Nobel for Discovery

[Alomex]

How do we know they won it because of those discoveries and not something else? after all correlation does not imply causation, and frankly the fact that it is explicitly mentioned in the citation for the prize is just anecdotal evidence not data.

Re:3 Scientists Share Nobel for Discovery

[the gnat]

the fact that it is explicitly mentioned in the citation for the prize is just anecdotal evidence not data

I can't tell, is this a parody troll or not? Here is the exact citation, from the source:

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 was divided, one half jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi mura "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites" and the other half to Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria"

How can this be made any clearer? Let me guess, this is going to be another one of those threads where a legion of idiots who don't realize that the Peace Prize is selected and awarded by an entirely different institution using different criteria make irrelevant comments about Obama's prize.

Re:Sites that require cookies?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might appreciate the press release directly from the Nobel Prize committee. Unlike other press releases, it actually goes into detail, and gives good background on the topic of the prize. (Though I don't know if the nobelprize.org domain sets cookies or not - I don't think they *require* them, though.)

Re:In Other News: Slashdot News Authors Win Prize

[robmarms]

yeah, it's the drug is spelled Ivermectin, among many other botch ups!

Re:Queue the misinformation...

[the gnat]

So basically, she found a 2000 year-old book that says the plant heals malaria, extracted the malaria-healing part and got a Nobel for discovering a malaria drug.

Well, it wasn't a malaria drug before she did the actual science necessary to prove that a 2000-year-old book wasn't simply full of shit, and the end result was many lives saved. I certainly don't begrudge her the Nobel, even though it means we'll spend the next few decades listening to the CCP and alternative medicine practitioners crowing about it. (I can't decide which is worse.)

Parasites

[king neckbeard]

Only one scientist did the work. The other two just leeched off of him to take credit.

first native Chinese science prize?

[peter303]

I thought I read a blurb in the paper about this. Chinese-born people have won science prizes after emigrating. And Chinese citizens have won literature and peace prizes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... China certainly spends a bundle on R&D these days, perhaps second in world now.

Re:Avermectin/Ivermectin

[robmarms]

Actually, Ivermectin is the drug given as a mixture of 2 different substances of the avermectin family.