WORLD> Photo
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WORLD> Photo
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AIDS pioneers and cancer researcher win Nobel prize
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-06 22:18 STOCKHOLM - Two French scientists who discovered the AIDS virus and a German who found the virus that causes cervical cancer were awarded the 2008 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology on Monday.
Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur won half the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million) for discovering the deadly virus that has killed millions of people since it was identified in the 1980s. Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf and a former director of the German Cancer Research Center shared the other half of the prize for work that went against the current dogma as to the cause of cervical cancer. "The three laureates have discovered two new viruses of great importance and the result of that has led to an improved global health," said Jan Andersson, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute. "We have reached two of the laureates, the two men, and they were both very, very happy. As far as I know Francoise has not yet been reached," Andersson told a news conference. The award marks a vote for Montagnier in a long-running dispute over who discovered and identified the virus, Montagnier or Dr. Robert Gallo, then of the US National Cancer Institute. Montagnier and Gallo each accused the other of working with contaminated samples and it took a meeting of two presidents -- then Jacques Chirac of France and Ronald Reagan of the United States -- to persuade the National Institutes of Health and the Institut Pasteur to share royalties for the discovery and for the two researchers to agree to share the credit in 1987. |
