2008 Nobel for Medicine

From the NY Times (empha­sis added by me):

The Nobel Prize in Med­i­cine was award­ed Mon­day to three Euro­pean sci­en­tists who had dis­cov­ered virus­es behind two dev­as­tat­ing ill­ness­es, AIDS and cer­vi­cal cancer. 
The oth­er half of the $1.4 mil­lion award will go to a Ger­man physi­cian-sci­en­tist, Dr. Har­ald zur Hausen, 72, for his dis­cov­ery of H.P.V., or the human papil­lo­ma virus. Dr. zur Hausen of the Ger­man Can­cer Research Cen­ter in Hei­del­berg “went against cur­rent dog­ma” by pos­tu­lat­ing that the virus caused cer­vi­cal can­cer, said the Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute in Stock­holm, which selects the med­ical win­ners of the prize.
 
His dis­cov­ery led to the devel­op­ment of two vac­cines against cer­vi­cal can­cer, the sec­ond most com­mon can­cer among women. An esti­mat­ed 250,000 women die of cer­vi­cal can­cer each year, most­ly in poor coun­tries.
 
Of the more than 100 human papil­lo­ma virus­es now known, about 40 infect the gen­i­tal tract and 15 of them put women at high risk for cer­vi­cal can­cer. But in a vast major­i­ty of cas­es, the body’s immune sys­tem clears H.P.V. before the virus­es cause harm. It is chron­ic infec­tion that is dangerous.

H.P.V. virus­es account for more than 5 per­cent of all can­cers worldwide.

We so often talk in vague terms about med­ical break­throughs, like the myth­i­cal ‘cure for can­cer’ — as though there were only one kind of can­cer and some mag­ic bul­let that would end it. Can­cer comes in many dif­fer­ent forms and is caused by a wide array of fac­tors. Dr. zur Hausen is bril­liant for find­ing a cause no one gave much cre­dence to and even more bril­liant for fol­low­ing through on his research.

Though there is no one cure for can­cer, here is a man who found a cause which led to a cure for one kind of dead­ly dis­ease. In approx­i­mate­ly 25 years, his research went from a “unpromis­ing” idea to a real vac­cine that stands a good chance of wip­ing out over 5% of can­cers world­wide in the next cou­ple of generations.

This was such an amaz­ing and won­der­ful dis­cov­ery — and fur­ther evi­dence that sci­ence’s best moments are when we dis­cov­er some­thing com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and counter-intu­itive. A well-deserved hon­or and one that will save many, many lives.