It’s Nobel season again, and I’ve again put the bottle of champagne to chill in my lab refrigerator (it’s now three decades old). But sadly, the Prize in Medicine or Physiology was just awarded to three people, none of them named Coyne. The Nobel website is short on details (and lacking photos), but the Guardian has more info and photos:
Nobel Site:
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 was divided, one half jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura “for thier [sic] 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”.
Guardian:
Tu gets half of the prize, while Campbell and Omura share the other half (total value about 1.2 million dollars US: less than a Templeton Prize! What kind of inequity is that?
Three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China have won the Nobel prize in medicine for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and infections caused by roundworm parasites.
The judges in Stockholm awarded the prize to William C Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura and Youyou Tu – the first ever Chinese medicine laureate.
Campbell and Ōmura were cited for discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites, while Tu was rewarded for discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria.
“The two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually,” the committee said. “The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.”
Ōmura made his discovery after collecting soil samples from around Japan and isolating bacteria called Streptomyces. One of them was Streptomyces avermitilis, which became the source for the drug avermectin.
Ōmura’s work was taken up by Campbell, who showed that Streptomyces avermitilis was remarkably effective at killing off parasites in domestic and farm animals. The compound responsible, avermectin, was modified into a more effective substance called ivermectin. When tested in humans, the compound was found to have killed off parasite larvae.
Meanwhile, working in China, Tu was searching through herbal remedies in the hope of finding new leads for malaria treatments. She found that an extract from the plant Artemisia annua was sometimes effective, but the results were inconsistent. After more research, she hit on the active compound in the plant, a chemical that became known as artemisinin, a new class of antimalarials that kill malaria parasites at an early stage of development.
For more on Tu, go see the New Scientist profile here, and for more on the specific scientific discoveries lauded, go here. There are two lessons from this award. First, it emphasizes the international character of science: a prize for combating internal parasites was shared by a Chinese woman, and Irishman now living in the U.S., and a Japanese man. Further, Tan’s discovery originated from an academy of “traditional Chinese medicine.” While some would dismiss that based on the name alone, remember that about 40% of the pharmaceuticals on U.S. shelves had their origin from plants. “Alternative medicine” of this sort is genuine medicine, and so those two words shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
Congrats to all three—true lifesavers, for there are nearly 600,000 deaths annually due to malaria, and about one-sixth of the world’s population, largely in sub-Saharan Africa, suffers from roundworm.
Nice at the end of long careers, to finally get that acknowledgement.
Seems like Tu did some good work at an institution founded on Maoist woo. I’m glad to know they’ve gotten away from all that.
万歳！ Banzai! Hurrah!
This was on my Google News page this morning, right next to a story about ISIS blowing up another archaeological treasure in Syria.
No irony there, eh? L
Clearly traditional herbal medicines can be effective and it is not surprising that many folk remedies using herbs should work if they are based on generations of experience. It thus makes a good deal of sense to trawl through traditional herbal medicines looking for potentially useful therapies.
What is less clear is why some people should think that herbal remedies must be safer than synthetic ones. If the medicine has an active ingredient there is always the possibility that it can have unwanted side-effects whether it is synthetically or naturally derived. Drugs produced in conventional modern pharmaceutical facilities (whether synthetic compounds or natural extracts) will tend to be safer than simple herbal preparations because the dose can be better controlled and because they will tend to be purer, with other potentially harmful chemicals present in the herb removed.
Unfortunately the practice of alternative medicine is often (usually?) accompanied by a good deal of woo including the use of treatments with no proven benefit (e.g. rhino horn, tiger penis etc)and the use of dosing ‘philosophies’ such as homeopathy that make no sense.
This!
I’m taking cimicifuga racemosa radix extract to help with some menopausal issues, yeah, it is derived from traditional herbal medicine. But guess what, real studies have shown it can work. It sure does for me. There are well known side effects, so far I have none. (The variant I take is produced in a pharmaceutical facility and standartised. The patient information leaflet is clear about side effects.)
But it’s all naaaaatural doesn’t fly with me, I always ask people about Digitalis, all natural and quite dangerous.
There is a fascinating discussion of the early medical use of foxglove (digitalis), and the patients who died in treatment, in Jenny Uglow’s “The Lunar Men.”
But with, as you say, the filtering effect of literally “weeding out” the woo, mumbo-jumbo and clap trap.
To add to Monika’s example of digitalis as “allllll natural, and quite dangerous”, how’s about the various compositions that set the footings for modern muscle relaxant drugs for surgical use and colloquially named “curare”. “allllll natural, and quite dangerous,” having been composed over the millennia by Amazonian Aboriginals for the express purpose of killing everything it touches. (Well, everything with a vertebrate nervous system, if I’ve remembered the modes of action correctly.)
A 10km asteroid landing on the Carribean is pretty natural too. Not very amenable to woo either.
But if you delute the asteroid to D100 it’ll help against headaches!
What? That’s how homeopathy works! The more outlandish the claim the better!
I need to bang my head 100 times against an asteroid to cure my headache? Verily is woo a wonderful thing!
Now, why did they use an RS-422 port on Pathfinder, instead of good old RS-232? Damn you, Tw*tter!
Wasn’t the asteroid necessary to rid the world of those pesky dinosaurs and pave the way for us to evolve? Actually, it doesn’t take much effort to insert woo most anywhere.
Speaking of asteroid impacts: was just reading about the Francevillian biota found in sediments in Gabon that are more than 2 billion years old. If these are really fossilized organisms it shows macroscopic multicellular life had evolved at that time. But shortly thereafter, Earth experienced the Vredefort and Sudbury impacts, each of which was much larger than the K/T boundary impact.
I had a dinosaur try to dive-turd me this morning. Didn’t impact, but didn’t look very extinct either.
I was once told by the daughter of a homeopathic practitioner that homeopathy doesn’t work well on people who started life using conventional medicines. Once you start getting vaccinated, and given antibiotics for infections and so on, homeopathy is no longer effective. I’ve never heard this before or since…and it seems that it would make homeopathy ineffectual for the majority of populations in the Western world. Has anyone heard of this before? Sounds like a good excuse for the ineffectiveness of homeopathy to me.
“Youyou Tu” is only the coolest name, ever.
Second only to Yo Yo Ma
So if those two were to marry, they would be announced at awards ceremonies as “Yo Yo Ma and Youyou Tu-Ma”?
If they called to make dinner reservations, I’d suggest a simple “table for Tu” request.
Sub
“Congrats to all three—true lifesavers”
Absolutely. The life expectancy in Sierra Leone is 49 years of age and the principle reason for that is malaria.
It’s worth remembering in these days of “personalized medicine” and “big data” that the biggest contributions science has made to human well-being result from combating infectious disease.
Going on a week ago there was a NYT op-ed from two surgery-oriented types who – if my poor memory serves me – want to see more surgery done throughout the world. I’m sure more surgery is needed (e.g., infant cleft palate), but I perceived that they minimized the need for combatting infectious disease in advocating for their own vested interest.
In Uganda getting Malaria regularly is part of growing up. I get Malaria on average at least twice a year ever since I was a child. Most of the drugs we took years ago are now ineffective thanks to drug resistance. The Artemether family of drugs (I assume these come from the Artemisia plant) are currently the only effective cure accessible to the public. Looks like we owe Youyou Tu a great debt of thanks.
And three cheers for the Nobel committee for making an excellent choice.
“You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? – Medicine.”
Tim Minchin
Love it! They should give out Nobel Prizes to comedians.
The Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced this Friday. I am unaware of anyone who deserves it. Doctors without Borders already won it in 1999.
I’m happy for them to get it again, especially after their latest stint in West Africa in the latest ebola outbreak.
And didn’t they get bombed – by the U.S. – in Afghanistan a few days ago?
Yeah, exactly! Jerry did an excellent post about it: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/10/03/9-members-of-doctors-without-borders-killed-dozens-of-others-wounded-as-collateral-damage-in-us-airstrike-in-afghanistan/
Nothing wrong with tradional medicines as long as they are subjected to stringent scientific scrutiny. Tu turned a toxic herb into a safe and effective drug for which she was also awarded the Lasker Prize. Way to go!
Congrats to the laureates! Hopefully they’re not too frail (all 80 or 85) to appreciate their prize- in both aspects of prestige and monetary gain.
And, for anyone interested, theIgnobel prize ceremony video is now available. http://www.improbable.com/ig/2015/
>But sadly, the Prize in Medicine or Physiology was just awarded to three people, none of them named Coyne<<
But how many of them have won the Censor of the Year award?
Jerry’s not old enough to win yet – looks like a minimum age restriction of 80 is in force this year.
How frequently I’ve used ivermectin on any number of animals. What heroes all three of these awardees are.
Unfortunately the biota is probably madly selecting for ivermectin resistance.
It took long enough – the recipients are lucky to still be around. I suppose the split in the prize money is due to an equal amount being allocated for each discovery and the laureates receiving an equal amount of the prize for that discovery. I wonder if this award was meant to acknowledge good work in the past that was missed or if there’s a dearth of new discoveries worth an award.
Reblogged this on perfectlyfadeddelusions.
Jerry Coyne, why did you say “sadly” in your post?
Did you read both of the first two sentences? It’s a joke!