Het is wel tragikomisch om te lezen dat Jonas Salk, de uitvinder van het polio-vaccin, de Nobelprijs Geneeskunde in 1954/55/56 geweigerd werd omdat de Zweedse adviserende viroloog (Sven Gard) vond dat het niet meer was dan bij elkaar geknutsel van ontdekkingen van anderen.
Waren de druiven zuur?
***
Examination
of the Nobel Archives reveals that Dr. Sven Gard, Professor of Virology at the
Karolinska Institute, convinced the Nobel Committee to name Enders and his
colleagues recipients of the 1954 Prize.
Gard wrote
that ‘the discovery by Enders’ group is the most important in the whole history
of virology…The discovery has had a revolutionary effect on the discipline of
virology’.
Salk was nominated for the Prize in 1955 and in 1956. The first
time, it was decided to wait for the results of the clinical trial of Salk’s
killed poliovaccine, which was in progress.
In 1956,
Gard wrote an 8-page analysis of Salk’s work, in which he concluded that “Salk
has not in the development of his methods introduced anything that is
principally new, but only exploited discoveries made by others.”
He concluded
that “Salk’s publications on the poliomyelitis vaccine cannot be considered as
Prize worthy”.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten