Anti-malaria success deserves recognition

THE BBC is profiling four people in seven different fields of human endeavor in a new history series called Icons. Among the scientists is Tu Youyou, the Chinese scientist who received a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2015. The three scientists profiled alongside Tu, are Albert Einstein, Maria Curie and Alan Turing. Some are proud of Tu being included in such company, while some doubt whether her achievement deserves that honor. Yuan Lanfeng, a researcher at the Chinese University of Science and Technology whose micro blog has about 2 million followers, comments:

Let's have a look at Tu's achievement first. She received the Nobel Prize because she extracted artemisinin, which is essential for anti-malaria drugs, from sweet wormwood. Having gained inspiration from ancient traditional Chinese medicine texts, she creatively used ether, instead of the formerly used alcohol, and successfully extracted artemisinin from sweet wormwood in 1971. In 1986, a new anti-malaria drug based on her research was licensed and entered production.

According to estimates by the World Health Organization, the number of newly infected malaria patients dropped by 37 percent in 2015 compared with that of 2000, while death rate dropped by 60 percent; Tu's achievement might have saved 6.2 million lives.