Byline: Thoru Pederson

COLUMN: AS I SEE IT

Most everyone has heard of the Nobel Prizes and people admire pioneers in science and medicine, but greater interest lies, understandably, in the payoffs of these discoveries. Last week the world learned that, in the category of physiology

Harald zur Hausen (whom I was once privileged to meet when he came to a lecture I gave in Germany) was recognized for discovering the virus that causes cervical cancer. This was a triumph of medical science, and I can't imagine that any knowledgeable scientist would quarrel with this choice. His work had the qualities of singularity (he was virtually alone in pursuing this idea), determination and importance. For years the Pap smear has detected a precancerous dysplasia as a barometer for what might come, but the discovery of the culprit virus gave rise to means to prevent the cancer-disposing infection.

Zur Hausen's discoveries took place in a context of skepticism, because most human cancer is not caused by viruses, but his work has saved, and will save, many thousands and thousands of women's lives throughout the world. The Nobel Prize committee takes the "first to discover" element as a key criterion, and wide medical impact as the other. Zur Hausen scored A+++ on both counts.

Surely more complicated were the deliberations that led to tapping the two discoverers of the AIDS virus, Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi. An e-mail from a former member of the Nobel committee to me this week states that they spent 20 years studying this discovery.

Here the committee again used priority of discovery as a key criterion and also saw fit to include the lab chief's top co-worker. These two scientists captured the AIDS virus from patient samples, a huge step toward developing a test for the virus and gaining the first understanding of its biological features. The AIDS virus does not spurt out of infected cells, like the virus that causes flu, for example, but instead is a subtle, hiding intracellular visitor whose presence must be coaxed using the sensitive lab methods that Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi expertly employed.

So what is the backstory here? Margaret Heckler, a graduate of Boston College Law School (LLB, 1965) served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1983 to 1986. At an April 23, 1984, press conference, she announced the discovery of the AIDS virus by a scientist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and his development of a test for the virus.

That scientist, who stood at her side, was Robert Gallo. Gallo had been racing to find the AIDS virus and had done so, but some months after the French scientists. Ms. Heckler was dutifully proud of this American biomedical achievement but couldn't have known the priority claims the French scientists would press. They had sent Gallo a sample of their virus as a helpful step in his work, so his later claim to discovery turned on whether their virus had inadvertently found its way into his own virus isolates from AIDS patients.

After threats of lawsuits and U.S.-France diplomatic distemper, the two scientific groups entered into a formal agreement that the AIDS virus had been "co-discovered." Last week, the Nobel Prize committee saw it differently. They weighed in that the priority of discovery was held by the French lab. Had this Nobel Prize deliberation been only for the AIDS virus, Gallo might have been included. But the Nobel Committee had decided to include recognition of the cervical cancer virus discovery.

With that, they could have done zur Hausen, Montagnier and Gallo.

Many years earlier, Gallo had discovered a special way to grow cells infected with viruses like the AIDS virus, so that finding could have been viewed as a technical gateway, as indeed it was. But in a departure from tradition in which a No. 2 lab member's role has sometimes not been recognized, the committee wisely decided to include Francois Barre-Sinoussi-Montagnier's collaborator, in recognition of her truly major role. The Nobel Prize is limited to a maximum of three co-recipients. Gallo has done superb work on HIV throughout his career but, contrary to some impressions, the Nobel Prizes do not recognize career contributions or even scientific leadership - they recognize a discovery itself.

There are always backstories in any Nobel Prize. But the committees almost always get it right. They did so this month.

Thoru Pederson is professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and a member of the Board of Trustees of UMass Memorial Health Care.

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CUTLINE: Thoru Pederson