Chapter 4: The Polio Researchers

Afterword

What comes with winning the Nobel Prize? There’s the gold—solid 23-karat before 1980 but since then made of an alloy plated with 24-karat gold. Then there’s the cash, with the first prize in 1901 giving winnings of 150,782 Swedish kronor (SEK), valued in 2020 currency at SEK 8,722,510. After 1901, the cash prize decreased for many years, depending on the performance of the invested funds, hitting a low in 1919 of only 28 percent of the original amount and staying below 40 percent until 1974. The prize money started a consistent climb in 1983 and has been nearly at, or exceeding, 100 percent of the original amount since 1991. The prize was set at SEK 10,000,000 in 2020 (approximately 1.17 million USD). The money is shared more often than not, with only six prizes in this quarter-century awarded to single individuals. Sometimes it was not shared equally. For example, in 1958 half the prize went to Joshua Lederberg while the other half was split between George Beadle and Edward Tatum. The Nobel Prize garners prestige, particularly scientific and academic prestige, which facilitated some winners to become administrators of illustrious institutions, like James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor and David Baltimore at Caltech. For others, the prestige gained them comfortable positions conducting dead-end research for the rest of their lives, such as Francis Crick, who didn’t manage any significant contributions in his twenty-eight years at the Salk Institute. In contrast, after winning his Nobel Prize, Har Gobind Khorana used his new position at MIT to lead the team that created the first man-made gene, and through the remainder of his career, he continued to contribute significantly to the understanding of gene control.

The tendency for authority to be assigned to Nobel laureates has been seized upon by many prizewinners to make pronouncements and offer opinions on subjects far afield of their training and expertise. After making tremendous contributions in the fields of virology and immunology, Frank Burnet served as a consultant on Australian educational policies with recommendations to do away with courses in literature, history, and art. Nikolaas Tinbergen went from studying dogs and parakeets to setting himself up as an autism expert, primarily targeting diffident mothering. His cowinner Konrad Lorenz concentrated his research on the behaviors of geese but felt entitled to declare with authority that Vietnam War protestors were suffering from mass mental illness. Perhaps most egregious of this lot was James Watson, who relentlessly claimed a genetic basis for everything from stupidity and laziness to sexual appeal. Others embraced their authority to resort to espousing esoteric philosophies, with a surprising number tackling the nature of consciousness. Christian de Duve considered that the spiritual and physical aspects were one, while Gerald Edelman was rather more specific in explaining that consciousness was the very stuff of brain connections. In contrast, John Eccles postulated an intelligence beyond the body that was controlling it. Ragnar Granit admitted that nothing in his deep study of brain neurons shed light on consciousness and predicted a dead end for researchers who would try to add up the sum of mechanical parts to explain spiritual awareness. George Wald concluded that consciousness has no location, cannot be measured, and is independent of space and time. Another favorite topic of these laureate/philosophers was to speculate on the origin of life. The two camps were sharply divided: either life emerged after a series of incredibly lucky accidents, as espoused by George Beadle, George Edelman, and Jacques Monod; or there was some intelligence or higher power involved, as speculated by John Eccles and Albert Claude. Then again it could be aliens, as outlined in Francis Crick’s theory of panspermia.

Many of these winners recognized that the fame, prestige, and authority of being a Nobel laureate also confers some social responsibility, but a special few of these Nobel Prize winners were heroes long before conducting their prizewinning research. Albert Claude risked his life to work underground with British intelligence in Belgium during WWI. The French freedom fighters André Lwoff, François Jacob, and Jacques Monod narrowly escaped death during WWII. Howard Temin was speaking against nuclear war as early as high school. Salvador Luria protested the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and inequality in employment and health care. Maurice Wilkins separated radioactive plutonium in government labs in England and then joined the Manhattan Project in the US, but later became an antinuclear activist. Marshall Nirenberg fought political oppression and the proliferation of nuclear arms. David Baltimore engaged in Vietnam War protests. The most eloquent of these men was George Wald, who challenged the public to look deeper into the institutions and policies that were driving the planet ever closer to nuclear annihilation. It is my hope that these stories convey an appreciation for the strengths and frailties of the people who make up the winners of the highest medical recognition in the world. If it helps you cultivate a healthy skepticism when you hear pronouncements from the medical experts of the day, I will feel I have communicated well. Look for the next volume in the Boneheads and Brainiacs series in

the near future.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1951–1975

1951 Max Theiler “for his discoveries concerning yellow fever and how to combat it”1

1952 Selman Waksman “for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis”

1953Hans Adolf Krebs “for his discovery of the citric acid cycle” Fritz Albert Lipmann “for his discovery of co-enzyme A and its importance for intermediary metabolism”

1954 John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins “for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue”

1955 Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell “for his discoveries concerning the nature and mode of action of oxidation enzymes”

1956 André Cournand, Werner Forssmann, and Dickinson Richards “for their discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system”

1957 Daniel Bovet “for his discoveries relating to synthetic compounds that inhibit the action of certain body substances, and especially their action on the vascular system and the skeletal muscles”

1 All quotes are per the official statements of the reasons for the awards on the Nobel organization official website, “All Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine,”

NobelPrize.org, nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-laureates-in-physiology-or -medicine/.

1958 George Beadle and Edward Tatum “for their discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events” Joshua Lederberg “for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria”

1959 Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg “for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid”

1960 Frank Burnet and Peter Medawar “for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance”

1961 Georg von Békésy “for his discoveries of the physical mechanism of stimulation within the cochlea”

1962 Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”

1963 John Carew Eccles, Alan Hodgkin, and Andrew Huxley “for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane”

1964 Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen “for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism”

1965 François Jacob, André Lwoff, and Jacques Monod “for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis”

1966Peyton Rous “for his discovery of tumour-inducing viruses” Charles Huggins “for his discoveries concerning hormonal treatment of prostatic cancer”

1967 Ragnar Granit, Haldan Keffer Hartline, and George Wald “for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye”

1968 Robert Holley, Har Gobind Khorana, and Marshall Nirenberg “for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis”

1969 Max Delbrück, Alfred Hershey, and Salvador Luria “for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses”

1970 Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler, and Julius Axelrod “for their discoveries concerning the humoral transmittors in the nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation”

1971 Earl Sutherland Jr. “for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the action of hormones”

1972 Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter “for their discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies”

1973 Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Nikolaas Tinbergen “for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns”

1974 Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, and George Palade “for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell”

1975 David Baltimore, Renato Dulbecco, and Howard Temin” for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell”

ABOUTTHE AUTHOR

Moira Dolan, MD, is a graduate of the University of Illinois School of Medicine and has been a practicing physician for over 30 years. Dr. Dolan is a patient advocate and public speaker who educates patients on their rights and the need for a healthy skepticism of the medical profession. In addition to being the author of Boneheads and Brainiacs: Heroes and Scoundrels of the First 50 Years of the Nobel Prize in Medicine (volume 1 of the Boneheads and Brainiacs series), she is the author of No-Nonsense Guide to Antibiotics, Dangers, Benefits & Proper Use; No-Nonsense Guide to Cholesterol Medications, Informed Consent and Statin Drugs; and No-Nonsense Guide to Psychiatric Drugs, Including Mental Effects of Common Non-Psych Medications. In addition, Dr. Dolan is a contributor to the blog SmartMEDinfo. She maintains a private medical practice in Austin, Texas.

Enjoy more great medical biographies by reading Boneheads and Brainiacs: Heroes and Scoundrels of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, book one in Moira Dolan’s series about the triumphs and follies of Nobel Prize in Medicine winners.

Price: $18.95 US ISBN: 978-1-61035-350-2 Available in paperback and ebook editions.