[HN Gopher] Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
___________________________________________________________________
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
Author : OrangeTux
Score : 201 points
Date : 2021-10-04 10:42 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nobelprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nobelprize.org)
| parsimony wrote:
| The TRPV1 and TRPV8 receptors are fascinating. Genetic variants
| in these receptors explain why we experience things differently.
| https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/are-you-a-spicy-food-wimp/
| OskarS wrote:
| Seems to me like maybe a more worthy recipient of this prize
| might be the vaccines that are currently saving hundreds of
| million of people from dying in the worst pandemic in a century?
| You know, the miracle vaccines that were developed many times
| faster than any other vaccine in history? The ones that (despite
| being perfectly safe, effective, and arguably the greatest
| achievement in medicine since antibiotics) are subject to an
| epidemic of skepticism, where a Nobel Prize could really help?
| mlang23 wrote:
| I stopped taking the nobel prize seriously when they awarded
| the peace nobel prize to Obama.
| OskarS wrote:
| The Peace Prize has it's fair share of whoppers (Henry
| Kissinger!), but the science ones are usually not quite that
| clueless. This oversight though, this one is pretty baffling
| to me.
| Kelteseth wrote:
| We live in a world where the Nobel Peace Prize winner, bombed
| another Nobel Peace Prize winner.
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/world/asia/obama-
| apologiz...
| jeltz wrote:
| Isn't that exactly why they should not give a prize for mRNA
| vaccines. The Norwegian Nobel Committee (the people who hand
| out the peace prize) has a history of handing out the prize
| too early (Obama, Arafat, etc) while the Swedish Research
| Council are much more cautious when handing out prizes.
| OskarS wrote:
| I don't think it's too early to say that the vaccines
| deserve it, given what they have already accomplished.
| jeltz wrote:
| I am sure people said the same for lobotomy back when
| Moniz won the prize. I am personally all for the mRNA
| vaccines and am vaccinated with Pfizer myself but I
| understand why they are cautious when handing out prizes.
| What harm is there in waiting a few years?
| [deleted]
| nairboon wrote:
| The peace prize is also very different from the science
| prizes. The peace prize is handed out by politicians (members
| of the Norwegian parliament), whereas the science prizes are
| handed out by scientists.
| tephra wrote:
| The members of the peace committee are _selected_ by
| Stortinget but no member of the committee currently serves
| as a member of parliament (although some are former
| members/politicians).
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| In general the Nobel committee really dislikes awarding
| scientific prizes to applied research. People have been
| pointing out for years that they ignore this at their own
| detriment [0].
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nmat2602
| siva7 wrote:
| I would have appreciated this year's one going for mRNA vaccine
| research as this would have been clearly the one to meet Nobel's
| will.
| evanb wrote:
| mRNA vaccines could also be eligible for the chemistry prize
| (which is often a biology prize in disguise).
| benrapscallion wrote:
| That's a chemistry prize and most likely will happen in the
| next 2-3 days. Typically technologies are rewarded in chemistry
| whereas basic science (physiology) is rewarded in medicine.
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| mRNA kills humans whats wrong with you
| mongol wrote:
| I think it is very likely that it will be rewarded, just not
| this year. Some time need to pass, and even though the
| discovery should be rewarded, it also needs to be figured out
| who to reward it to. Probably there are more than 3 contenders.
| bduerst wrote:
| I would bet money that there is one awarded in the next 10-15
| years.
|
| Nobel prizes are notorious for not being reactionary, and
| waiting for the full effects of the work to be realized -
| i.e. GFP tagging awarded the nobel prize 16 years after it
| was first used.
|
| mRNA vaccination technology is just getting started, the
| impact of which will likely be on the level of penicillin.
| akiselev wrote:
| It might take even longer, though the all encompassing
| impact of the pandemic might bring it to the forefront.
| Although there are outliers, at this point the average time
| from discovery to Nobel recognition is over 20 years for
| the most recent prizes: https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/2020/10/09/the-nobe...
| refurb wrote:
| It's not a popularity content. Nobel prizes are typically not
| given until several years after the work is complete and enough
| time has passed to fully appreciate the significance of it.
|
| I'd say it's a bit early for mRNA vaccines.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| On the one side, you are correct and it's only last year /
| this year that mRNA vaccines have seen widespread adoption.
|
| On the other, mRNA research goes back to the 80's, and mRNA
| vaccine research goes back twenty years; these facts are
| often overlooked by the "it was developed too fast" crowds.
|
| That said,
|
| > It's not a popularity content.
|
| And yet, they gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize the year he
| was elected, without any merit or achievements to back it up.
| That decision was politically motivated. Same with giving it
| to Al Gore for his climate activism. They even tried to
| nominate Hitler in 1939, albeit in jest.
| dcgudeman wrote:
| The Nobel Peace prize has always had political motivations
| that have reduced it's credibility. Last year it was
| awarded to the "World Food Programme" and in 2001 it was
| awarded to the "United Nations". It's best view the peace
| prize separately.
| chucky wrote:
| The Nobel peace prize is handed out by a different
| committee compared to the other prizes, so how its handled
| should generally not be seen as an indicator for the other
| Nobel prizes.
| bumby wrote:
| Does that go for the "Nobel" prize in economics as well?
| chucky wrote:
| I don't know and I don't care about that faux prize.
|
| The Peace prize is handled by a special Norwegian
| committee in accordance with Nobel's wishes, so it has
| its own everything (including its own ceremony), while
| the other prizes are all under the same umbrella in some
| form (although I believe the scientific subcommittees
| doing the acual awarding are independent).
| adolph wrote:
| They could probably expand brand awareness by creating a
| NobelX prize for locally popular Nobel-esque work.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yes, it is not even a Nobel price.
| bacro wrote:
| >On the other, mRNA research goes back to the 80's, and
| mRNA vaccine research goes back twenty years; these facts
| are often overlooked by the "it was developed too fast"
| crowds.
|
| I am on that camp, that it was developed too fast and I do
| not think people should be mistreated because they think
| that. After all, there has been some adverse effects for
| some of the people who took it (like the auto-immune
| disease for the Janssen vaccine or thrombosis that caused
| some deaths in women who were taking the pill at the same
| time). I am not against vaccines in general, I am just
| worried that, as there is clearly an economic interest in
| rushing things up, that some bugs may still be on these
| vaccines that will need to be fixed. We have no idea of the
| long-term effects these vaccines have, unless someone has
| invented a time-machine and gone to the future. When
| concrete, well-made studies have been made that these
| vaccines are safe long-term and effective, I do not see why
| should someone not take it. Until then, I will wait at the
| comfort of my home.
|
| After all, even if I took the vaccine, I would also
| continue to spread the virus just as someone who did not
| take it.
|
| Another point is: How deadly is this vaccine to someone who
| is healthy? Is that value so big that we should rush to
| take not fully tested vaccines? I would get that criticism
| if there was a rate of 20, 30% of guaranteed death to
| someone who contracted the virus. At these current values?
| I think I will take my chances.
| silvester23 wrote:
| What I fail to understand is how you seem to think that
| you can can assess the risks associated with contracting
| the virus better than the risks associated with getting
| the vaccine.
|
| At this point, so many more people have received the
| vaccine than have contracted the virus that I think it's
| fairly safe to say that we know much more about how
| people react to the vaccine than the virus (which also
| keeps mutating unlike the vaccine).
|
| It's true that we don't _know_ the long-term effects of
| the vaccine but
|
| 1) my understanding is that medically speaking, a few
| weeks after the shot every trace of the actual vaccine is
| gone from the body and all that remains is that your
| immune system has learned how to fight the virus and
|
| 2) we certainly do not know the long-term effects of the
| virus either
|
| So unless you are in a position where you can completely
| seal yourself off and be sure you will not get the virus,
| it's a choice between getting vaccinated and getting the
| virus. Considering what I wrote above, to me that is an
| obvious choice.
| bacro wrote:
| > What I fail to understand is how you seem to think that
| you can can assess the risks associated with contracting
| the virus better than the risks associated with getting
| the vaccine.
|
| As I said, I cannot. Actually, nobody can. What I do know
| is:
|
| - A vast majority of who gets the virus does not die or
| get any effects. - A lot of people who die of Covid-19
| has a comorbidity factor of 4 (Which means suffers from 4
| comorbidities). - I am 40 years old and no other
| comorbidities than a very light asthma. I eat well and
| try to do some exercise (but not as much as I would like,
| for sure). - There are no studies of long-term effects of
| getting the vaccines or getting the virus. - Anyone who
| took the vaccine can be infected and spread the virus
| just as someone who is not vaccinated. - Things that are
| made under political/financial pressure rarely get right
| the first time.
|
| So, with this data, for me it is logical for people to
| wait if they can. If they have comorbidities or are old,
| then it is another story.
| bumby wrote:
| > _A vast majority of who gets the virus does not die or
| get any effects._
|
| To the OP's point, the same can be said about the
| vaccine. Their point being, because of the
| transmissibility of the virus, it's fairly safe to assume
| that most people leading normal lives will be exposed to
| the virus at some point so the choice is whether or not
| to be exposed while vaccinated or not. There seems to be
| less uncertainty around the vaccine than the virus, so
| the risks are better known.
| bacro wrote:
| Both of these scenarios are possible (among others,
| obviously):
|
| - I take the vaccine and either die or have a side-effect
| for life because of some unknown related to my body. - I
| contract the virus and have no symptoms at all.
|
| Nobody knows which one will happen to each individual.
| That woman that took the vaccine and died one day later?
| We will never know if she was better off without taking
| the vaccine and having the virus instead. Our body is too
| complex to predict that right now.
|
| I find it particularly amusing that people that question
| the vaccines safety are being treated as idiots that know
| nothing about science. Like, never the scientists were
| wrong before or the big pharma/government never had their
| own interests in their mind. I guess it is easier to
| attack us than to have a rational conversation.
| wombatpm wrote:
| 43 million US Covid cases to date 700k deaths
|
| 393 million doses of the vaccine have been administered
| in the US
|
| I think the safety of the vaccine has been established.
| You are welcome to take whatever risks you want. Just
| because you have been lucky so far, doesn't make it the
| correct approach. If you really believed it was no big
| deal, you'd run out and get COVID. Instead, you hope your
| luck will hold. Thing about luck is that it always runs
| out.
| bacro wrote:
| How many of those 700k deaths are from people with 3 or 4
| comorbities?
|
| If you remove that from the equation, it would give a lot
| lower number I am sure. Now compare this with the flu.
| Would these people with comorbities die if they catch the
| flu? Do you absolutely know they wouldn't?
|
| If you have comorbidities, by all means, take the shot.
| If you do not have comorbidities and want to take the
| shot as well, fine it is your body, you can do whatever
| you want with it that does not put me in danger. I, for
| instance, want to take the shot only when I know for sure
| it won't affect me. After all, the city where I live was
| one of the firsts that got Covid cases and it got so bad
| that the city was in complete lockdown and at the time
| there was no guidance for masks usage. So, I went to
| supermarkets, pharmacies, whatever at that time with no
| mask and if I had to bet, I would bet that I already got
| covid and was asymptomatic.
| wombatpm wrote:
| COVID has been fatal to people without comorbidities. The
| fact that you have a respiratory issues and want to take
| a chance with a respiratory disease shows you are just
| counting on your luck. I wish you well
| bacro wrote:
| Has the flu been fatal to people without comorbidities?
| bumby wrote:
| I have no personal umbrage if somebody weighs the risk
| and decides against the shot. What's confusing is when
| people only acknowledge one side of the risk equation and
| couch it as some sort of risk-based decision.
|
| > _I, for instance, want to take the shot only when I
| know for sure it won 't affect me._
|
| That's fine. What's incongruent is when it's followed up
| with the sentiment below.
|
| > _I went to supermarkets, pharmacies, whatever at that
| time with no mask_
|
| I don't quite understand the logic. You don't want the
| shot because the risk uncertainty is too great. Yet you
| have no problem (likely, in your words) exposing yourself
| to the disease at a frame when there was little data
| about it and the uncertainty was also great. Now that
| there's more data, the uncertainty is even more in favor
| of the vaccine being safer than the disease.
|
| Again, I don't really care if people don't want to get
| the vaccine on a personally level. But, absent of some
| grand conspiracy, don't try to rationalize that decision
| as some pragmatic risk-based analysis. If you do think
| its riskier due to some large conspiracy that, too, will
| need some data to back it up. Make peace with the fact
| its an emotionally based decision and not a data-driven
| one and move on.
| bacro wrote:
| At the time, there was no guidelines to use the mask.
| Actually, people still thought that masks would be worse
| than not using at the time. This was at the beginning of
| the pandemic.
|
| This has to be an emotional decision as well, I am not a
| doctor, I have to follow my gut before there is data to
| analyze.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't think anybody is disagreeing here to the level
| insinuated. The OP's point wasn't that the vaccine has no
| risk. It's that both choices have risks, but since
| there's more data regarding the vaccine, there is less
| uncertainty about the risks.
|
| With most of the population (possible exception being
| teenage males, the last I looked, regarding myocarditis),
| the same outcomes are prevalent regarding the virus as
| the vaccine, but at lower probabilities with vaccine.
| Since risk = severity x probability, that generally makes
| the risk of the vaccine lower.
|
| Questioning a vaccine is prudent and doesn't make someone
| an idiot. But sometimes there does seem to be a
| conflation of ideas regarding risk, data, and
| uncertainty.
| xattt wrote:
| You may be conflating the mRNA vaccine with viral vector
| ones.
| bacro wrote:
| Not at all. Here is the news of a woman who died after
| getting the Pfizer's vaccine: (In Portuguese)
| https://politica.estadao.com.br/blogs/estadao-
| verifica/gover...
|
| The news say that it was unrelated to the vaccine and it
| was a heart attack. However, I do not believe in
| coincidences and am very skeptical that the vaccine has
| not had some effect on this. Note that she died 1 day
| after getting the vaccine.
| rmu09 wrote:
| Such "anecdotal evidence" doesn't say much per se.
|
| In austria, a women died of a heart attack while waiting
| in line to be injected. Just imagine what would have
| happend if the heart attack would have happened 30
| minutes later, it would have been very hard to convince
| people the heart attack was not related to the
| vaccination.
| bacro wrote:
| Sure it does not, but it does not say that it was not
| from the vaccine as well.
|
| I am also very distrustful of our government influence in
| investigations after covid vaccines. The government wants
| the vaccine to work so that it can go back to normality
| and not have to worry about the impending financial
| crisis that would come faster if there was no vaccine.
|
| How do I know that other people that died after getting
| the vaccine were not from a side effect of it? How can I
| be sure that these numbers are 100% correct? How can I be
| sure that all those covid deaths are really from covid
| and not something else unrelated to it? I am not saying
| that the vaccines are responsible for 20, 30% of the
| deaths or something like that, but there is the incentive
| from the government to not provide the real picture of
| these numbers (if they are not ridiculous numbers of
| course).
|
| As in tech, be very distrustful of everything version
| 1.0. It always has some bugs to iron out ;)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 6 billions vaccine doses have been injected, about 1% of
| the world population dies every year, doing simple math,
| it means about 160000 people should die less than one day
| after getting the vaccine from unrelated causes. Heart
| attacks are a common cause of death, if not the most
| common, at around 1/4. It means 40000 of these deaths
| should be heart attacks.
|
| That's enough for me to believe in coincidences.
| jeltz wrote:
| If you did not confuse them why did you mention the
| Jansen vaccine which is vector based and uses DNA rather
| than mRNA?
| bacro wrote:
| That was only to make a point that it was a vaccine that
| was developed very fast and had some (nasty) side-effects
| and that we should be careful not to rush things out. But
| rest assured that the second example I gave about the
| woman who died, died after taking the Pfizer vaccine.
| rmu09 wrote:
| Janssen vaccine is vector based, not mRNA like Pfizer
| Comirnaty or Moderna.
|
| Although vaccinated people can be infected and even
| spread the virus, the disease is usually mild, amount of
| infectious virus and the time they are infectious is much
| smaller. And that is no speciality of covid
| immunizations, other vaccines like measles or influenza
| also don't prevent infection, but aim to prevent the
| disease.
|
| The "not fully tested" meme is nonsense, many hundred
| million people have been vaccinated in the meantime, the
| safety profile is known.
|
| Regarding long time effects beside immunity of vaccines,
| this interview https://lexfridman.com/vincent-racaniello/
| goes into some detail. TLDL: there is nothing to
| expect/fear.
| bacro wrote:
| > Although vaccinated people can be infected and even
| spread the virus, the disease is usually mild, amount of
| infectious virus and the time they are infectious is much
| smaller.
|
| I confess I haven't watched that video yet, but I believe
| there are not any studies that claim that "amount of
| infectious virus and the time they are infectious is much
| smaller". But I will watch it later and see if something
| new came up. I claim this because not long ago, our prime
| minister was infected after being fully vaccinated and
| had to be at home for 10 days before coming back to work.
|
| Like I said, I am healthy and can work from home, so I
| have the luxury of waiting a little while to make my
| decision. After all, I am only affecting myself with this
| decision. A lot of people die from smoking/drinking
| alcohol as well, should we prevent them from getting it?
| beerandt wrote:
| Part of the Israeli study showed that the viral
| count/load of breakthrough infections was not
| significantly lowered compared to non-breakthrough
| infections.
| rmu09 wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01316-7
|
| I know of one other study (can't find it at the moment
| though) that specifically looked not for CT value but if
| they are able to infect cells. The outcome was something
| like vaccinated people do replicate virus, but the spikes
| of those viruses are (mostly) deactivated by antibodies
| and therefore not as infectious as virus obtained from
| unvaccinated people. In rt-PCR tests you can't really
| distinguish infectious from deactivated virus.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Every death is a tragedy.
|
| The correct null hypothesis is that in the counterfactual
| world where those people had gotten the virus rather than
| the vaccine, they would have ended up dead anyway.
| dahfizz wrote:
| The Nobel Peace Prize has been nothing but a meme for a
| while. The science prizes are still respected, and if they
| want them to stay that way then they should continue to
| award them based on science and not politics.
| bacro wrote:
| Funnily enough, Egas Moniz was given the nobel prize in
| medicine for the lobotomy procedure. He claimed it helped the
| mentally ill. How scientific was that? XD
| ethanbond wrote:
| Lobotomy is still used and it is still "scientific"...
|
| We luckily have better treatments available for almost
| every scenario, but it's definitely still a tool in the
| toolbox. Same with electroshock therapy. We can be thankful
| for advancements without being dismissive of some of the
| less ideal steps along the way.
| bacro wrote:
| Saying that lobotomy was good for mentally-ill people
| seems not very good science to me. Some people agree that
| he should be de-Nobelized (which I agree): https://www.th
| eguardian.com/education/2004/aug/02/highereduc...
|
| Disclaimer: I am portuguese.
| siva7 wrote:
| There is a great quote from Norbert Wiener about the
| procedure:
|
| "[P]refrontal lobotomy ... has recently been having a
| certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact
| that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier.
| Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their
| custodial care still easier."
|
| I've studied medicine but i'm not aware that it is still
| taught as a "tool in the toolbox" in the modern medical
| community.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yeah, I think we can agree that it should not be used the
| way that it was historically.
| [deleted]
| ramraj07 wrote:
| What exactly have this years Nobel research been significant
| for? Like in real terms?
| cinntaile wrote:
| Check out the image in their scientific motivation to see
| where this has played a role.
| https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/10/press-
| medicine202...
| ramraj07 wrote:
| You can write lists like that for pretty much half the
| genes in the genome. If you ask a pharma company to rank
| order genes they would like to get exclusively as targets
| these would be ranked in 4 digits if not 3. There's a
| reason no lab bothered to discover it for so long.
|
| Sydney Brenner said in the 60s that they already
| discovered all there is to molecular biology and leave
| the details to the "Americans" (1). These are the
| details. This work would have been pedestrian back in the
| 60s, it's downright boring at this point. When people ask
| why science sucks today this is a great example. Not that
| this research was performed, of course someone had to at
| some point. But that people have been led to believe this
| is worth of celebration at this level.
|
| [1] https://www.hobertlab.org/how-the-worm-got-started/
| and https://www.genetics.org/content/165/4/1633
| [deleted]
| cinntaile wrote:
| I guess Sydney suffered from scientific hubris, it
| happens to the best of us ;)
|
| What can I say. Next year there'll be a new price, maybe
| you'll be more impressed with next year's choice.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Sydney might be proud and vain but his statement of
| relevance here was not due to that. Scientists are
| supposed to constantly try and indemnify what's hard and
| important and pursue those fields. He said that statement
| because back then he believed the important fields to
| explore were developmental biology and neuroscience. More
| recently he wrote an editorial suggesting how a field
| like connectomics would be the equivalent new, exciting,
| important field would be.
|
| The celebration of mediocrity with Nobels for no real
| reason except probably politics (I sat near to the Nobel
| cabals in lectures these candidate prize winners will
| come give talks at) isn't in the interest of science or
| progress is all.
| Tomte wrote:
| That's the current practice, but siva7 is right in regards to
| timing and Nobel's will:
|
| "to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during
| the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to
| humankind." (https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/full-
| text-of-alfred-...)
| refurb wrote:
| If you look back it's usually a decade or more before a
| discovery gets a Nobel prize. Which makes sense, since it's
| relevance isn't usually immediately apparent.
| dustintrex wrote:
| Yes, but you'd be hard put to argue that there was an
| invention that got more benefit for humanity than mRNA
| vaccines in 2021.
| refurb wrote:
| Considering we're about half way through an epidemic with
| new variants on the horizon I'd argue it's a little early
| to start patting ourselves on the back?
| dustintrex wrote:
| It's not a silver bullet, but there are millions of
| people who are not dead now because they got vaccinated.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| I agree, but I guess the challenge here is who are the 3
| scientists to credit? Katalin Kariko is certainly one of them,
| but who are the other two? Weissman? Ugur Sahin? Ozlem Tureci?
| Ingmar Hoerr? Noubar Afeyan? And then there is the weirdo guy
| that calls himself "mrna vaccine inventor"?
|
| I guess the committee needs another 1-2 years time to decide on
| that, with the benefit of hindsight.
| benrapscallion wrote:
| If you look at the past awards, the Nobel committee prefers
| awarding those who published the earliest, fundamental
| results. Even if it was published in some obscure non-English
| language journal (see the artemisinin prize, for example).
| OskarS wrote:
| They've given it to organizations before (Doctors Without
| Borders won in 1999). Give it to Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford
| University then. Or "front line COVID-workers" or something.
| Exactly who gets it is not the main point, the main point is
| rewarding this incredible achievement in medicine (both the
| science of it, but also the work in testing, manufacturing
| and delivering it to patients).
| evanb wrote:
| MSF won the peace prize, not a science prize. Science
| prizes have not gone to organizations; if there were ever
| an opportunity to break that tradition it was with the
| discovery of the Higgs (the 2013 prize) and they didn't.
| ginko wrote:
| >Doctors Without Borders won in 1999
|
| That was the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not sure if the same
| applies to the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| > They've given it to organizations before
|
| No, never (You are confusing it with the Peace Nobel)
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The Nobel Prize typically rewards basic research, not
| applied - look up who got the prize with respect polio
| vaccines if you're curious.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Good point. In this case Katalin Kariko and Weismann are
| the frontrunners.
| Arete314159 wrote:
| I've really been holding out hope for K. Kariko. She put
| up with such monumental struggles. Obviously the MRNA
| Covid vaccine is a huge "prize" and vindication for her,
| but I'd love to see even more. She deserves it.
| satisfice wrote:
| I can only assume they are waiting until next year to be sure
| how the vaccine picture shakes out. MRNA vaccines are clearly
| safe and effective, and have saved countless lives, but with
| the dopey politics in Sweden about Covid, I am not really that
| surprised.
| [deleted]
| chucky wrote:
| As a Swede, I feel like I need to point out that this comment
| seems misinformed on so many levels:
|
| - the Nobel prize in medicine is not handed out by the
| Swedish government, so any dopey politics would not influence
| the Nobel prize. Rather, it is handed out by Karolinska
| Institutet (https://www.nobelprize.org/about/the-nobel-
| assembly-at-karol...)
|
| - Sweden's handling of Covid has not been particularly
| influenced by politics, it's been run by the government-
| appointed experts (that were appointed before Covid broke
| out), so the "dopey politics" referred to have never really
| been politically motivated.
|
| I don't think there's any reason for connecting Sweden's
| Covid response with who got the Nobel prize in Medicine this
| year.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| That's what I was hoping to see, an award to Kariko and
| Weissman for their mRNA research. I'm sure they'll get the
| Nobel within the next few years, but it would have been
| appropriate to award it now. The Nobel Committee doesn't rush
| the prizes, and they don't generally go to new research, but
| mRNA would be a very justified exception. We're currently in
| the worst pandemic in a century, and over the last ten months
| we've seen how the mRNA vaccines provide amazingly high
| protection against hospitalization and death.
| causi wrote:
| I have to say, awarding it for mRNA research could easily
| save lives by turning a few of the vaccine-hesitant.
| jeltz wrote:
| Turning the Nobel Prize political does not seem like a good
| thing even if the cause is noble this time.
| nairboon wrote:
| I somewhat doubt that anti-vaxxers even care about the
| Nobel Prize.
| bacro wrote:
| As I said in another comment, Egas Moniz won the Nobel
| prize in medicine for the lobotomy procedure for mentally-
| ill people!!
| rpmisms wrote:
| How? Pretty sure scientists praising other scientists isn't
| what those people are looking for.
| pibechorro wrote:
| They can just take the nobel they censored from ivermectin and
| attribute it to the mrna shots, no? /S
| thecopy wrote:
| Who are they and how did they censor?
| kibwen wrote:
| The parent is sarcastically suggesting that there is a
| conspiracy to suppress ivermectin for use in treating
| covid. Ivermectin won the 2015 Nobel for its use in
| treating roundworm parasites. (Just to be maximally clear,
| covid is a virus, not a parasite.)
| beerandt wrote:
| Plenty of medicines are used for multiple things. Just
| because something is labeled X, doesn't preclude it from
| also being effective at Y.
|
| I'm not claiming that ivermectin is effective or not, but
| there is an incentive in preventing any FDA approved
| treatments from being used against COVID:
|
| emergency authorizations (including the current "full",
| "non-emergency" authorization that is contengent on the
| completion of ~12 additional detailed studies over the
| next 3 years) are only allowed by law if no FDA approved
| medicine is available as an alternative treatment.
|
| The fact that other, still experimental medications and
| vaccinations are allowed is proof that the FDA doesn't
| consider the current "non-emergency" vaccine
| authorization to be a "fully" authorized one.
|
| The full authorization of any new or existing medication
| would preclude all other experimental treatments from
| being used under emergency authorization.
| matsemann wrote:
| I like how they always present the work in a readable way for
| laymen. Look forward to the various awards each year just because
| it's interesting to dive into all the different stuff. The talks
| are also often worth a watch.
| harscoat wrote:
| eg. Explaining topology with bread donut and bretzel
| https://phys.org/news/2016-10-nobel-physics-prize-awarded-to...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Are there useful possibilities opened up by increased
| understanding of how the touch receptors work? I can imagine that
| our ability to manipulate those more effectively could have a lot
| of useful applications.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| I believe Nobels for mRNA vaccines will come next year or in the
| year after. There's no urgency when it comes to awarding Nobel
| Prizes.
| Zitrax wrote:
| Related: Here is an article investigating the delay between
| discovery and award:
| https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.2012/full...
|
| As can be seen there the delay is often measured in decades.
| For medicine many awards around 20 years or more after
| discovery.
| giarc wrote:
| Some urgency since they don't give the award to people that
| have passed away.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Katalin Kariko is 66 now and not 99 ;)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Mods: title typo "Discoveres" -> Discoverers
| docdocgoose wrote:
| I appreciate that some Nobel selections, like this one, are for
| core biological discoveries rather than hot topics.
|
| How our bodies perceive / interface with the world is fundamental
| to our human experience: Pain, temperature, positioning. And that
| these perceptions can be significantly modulated by how our
| bodies process them (eg pain).
|
| Not only is their actual body of work impressive, as it cuts
| across so many methodologies to get a glimpse at "how things
| work," their discoveries opened up fields for others.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Hard disagree. These are for lack of better word standard
| discoveries that the high intensity labs discover with pretty
| much standard methodologies and no Innovations worthy of a
| Nobel. Of course we have receptors for heat and touch, and of
| course someone eventually found them. What's original in that
| process? This is not RNAi, or CRISPR, or GFP. One of the more
| underwhelming Nobels in recent times. Somehow worse than
| superresolution.
| snambi wrote:
| Nobel prize seems like a marketing agency to me.
| baktubi wrote:
| Hard disagree your hard disagree.
|
| If you throw a vase in the air it will fall down and shatter:
| like, duh it's gravity. But how many years to figure the
| equations? To tie the how/why to the obvious?
|
| Don't trivialize their work because your work didn't receive
| a Nobel. K thanks.
|
| These discoveries could be game changers for prosthetics,
| brain computer interfaces, augmented reality, etc.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I'm trivializing their research based on their inherent
| triviality. Any new gene could be game changers for a
| plethora of ailments. The correct gravity comparison would
| be trying to celebrate someone finding the value of g in
| Oxford when the original measurement was in London.
|
| I didn't say I am sour I didn't get one. When did a film
| critic need an Oscar before he could criticize moviemakers?
| suchow wrote:
| The criteria for winning the prize depend more on the outcome
| of the research (importance) than its process (originality):
|
| "The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts,
| which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to
| the person who shall have made the most important discovery
| within the domain of physiology or medicine ..." (Excerpt
| from the will of Alfred Nobel)".
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Again, why are these genes more important than say, GM-CSF?
| That gene has 10 times more therapeutic importance than
| these genes. I can name 500 genes more important for any
| practical purpose than these genes. That's the reason none
| of the early scientists were scrambling to discover them.
| soheil wrote:
| Something as fundamental as heat and pressure are not
| important? I don't have a biology background, but
| learning that we just discovered these genes gave me the
| impression that we're still living in the stone age.
| Kudos to the award recipients for discovering the genes
| responsible.
|
| It's probably that much harder to find these genes
| responsible for such basic sensory abilities that so much
| work must have gone into them if not for their lack
| therapeutic importance as you suggest, but also for the
| prestige scientists knew they would receive if they did
| discover them first.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| You are absolutely right that it's dumb that it took so
| long for us to have discovered these receptors so late.
| Consider for a second though that this might be a symptom
| of a fundamental myopia in the way biological science
| itself has progressed? That perhaps we have been
| congratulating people for the wrong thing - discovering
| expected genes instead of finding new ways to do
| everything faster or finding things that are completely
| unexpected. As much as heat and pressure sound like
| fundamental senses (they are), they aren't very high on
| the priority list of basically anyone trying to do
| biology with applications in mind. Heat receptors don't
| cure cancer or cystic fibrosis. Or Covid.
| Duller-Finite wrote:
| TRP channels were first cloned over 20 years ago, and are
| indeed medically relevant for nociception and pain. The
| piezos are equally relevant; knockouts are embryonically
| lethal, and the function of mechanosenstation in
| somatosenation and in general continue to be elucidated.
| For instance, it was only a few years that they were
| identified as being required for the baroreceptor reflex.
| COGlory wrote:
| >I can name 500 genes more important for any practical
| purpose than these genes.
|
| The arrogance of this statement is astrounding. Perhaps
| you didn't mean it to come off that way?
|
| First of all, these are important genes - extremely
| important genes, because they are a large part of the
| basis of that whole "response to stimulus" thing that
| people are pretty fond of associating with life.
|
| That said, regardless of their actual importance, it's
| pretty remarkable for anyone to say any gene is important
| or not important considering how little we actually know
| about biological processes. I see all the time people
| doing "omics" work and wanting to jump to conclusion
| because of data, but data-only makes a relatively blind
| conclusion. There's still far far more unknown than
| known, and these genes are fundamental genes for starting
| to actually build a functional model of human biology.
| They are boilerplate genes.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Before it gets hijacked by zealots on both side in saving or
| depopulating the planet. It was a quite conservative pick given
| the complexities and interwovenness of discoveries in a given
| field: Citation Index and some fundamental property (TRPV -->
| Temperature/Heat/Pain & PIEZO--> Touch/Proprioception), it was
| relatively easy to pinpoint those two (no pun intended).
|
| The mRNA technology would not be so clear cut in terms of persons
| involved since it had to go through many hurdles. There are two
| illustrative roadmaps [1][2] (And yes, Malone et al. was a early
| contributor as well (1989)[3])
|
| [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554980/bin/ijm..
| . [2]https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-
| static/image/... [3]https://www.pnas.org/content/86/16/6077
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-04 23:01 UTC)