GERMANY/FRANCE:THE AWARD of the Nobel Prize in Medicine yesterday reopened a 25-year-old controversy over the discovery of HIV by neglecting an American researcher who played a significant role in early scientific work on Aids.
The prizes can be awarded to a maximum of three people and cannot be given posthumously, but the Nobel committee chose to reward two of the early HIV discoverers and a third scientist who worked on a separate disease.
Half of the prize fund - 10 million Swedish kronor - has gone to the German scientist Prof Harald zur Hausen for his discovery that the human papilloma virus (HPV) can cause cervical cancer. The other half will be shared between Prof Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Prof Luc Montagnier, two French scientists who discovered HIV.
The issue of who discovered HIV became a bitter dispute in the mid-1980s when it became clear there would be huge revenues from diagnostic tests derived from the discovery. Another scientist, Prof Robert Gallo at the University of the Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, also claimed rights to the discovery.
There was an acrimonious dispute over patent ownership which culminated in an out-of-court settlement and a joint statement by then US president Ronald Reagan and French president Jacques Chirac in which both sides agreed to split the proceeds evenly.
Prof John Oxford, a virologist at Queen Mary, University of London, said he felt Prof Gallo deserved equal credit and to award the prize to all three would have drawn a line under the controversy. "It doesn't land pleasantly on my tongue. It doesn't taste right," he said.
Prof Oxford said he felt that Prof zur Hausen's work, though important, was in a different league. "It's not such a big discovery." The chair of the Nobel committee, Prof Bertil Fredholm, dismissed suggestions Prof Gallo deserved an equal stake.
Prof Sunil Shaunak, a virologist at Imperial College London, said both awards were "richly deserved". "
What they have done is a true merger of science and medicine, it has yielded a true benefit for patients."
The prizes, which were endowed by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish armaments manufacturer and inventor of dynamite, have been awarded since 1901. - (Guardian service)