south africa

world
no matter how it’s cut, steinman did pass away before
the announcement was made. cruelly, he didn’t know
he’d won; and perhaps even crueler, that he’d won for
work that had extended his own life.
many believed that the second secretary-general
of the United Nations had been assassinated.
Whatever the truth, at the time of his death
Hammarskjold had already been nominated
for the prize, and the Nobel Committee of the
Karolinska Institute in Sweden had already
decided that he deserved it. He was the last
man to receive the award posthumously.
Come 1974, in a characteristically
delayed response to the Hammarskjold
dilemma, the Nobel Committee changed
its rules. Henceforth, the body declared, a
prize "cannot be awarded posthumously,
unless death has occurred after the
announcement." But on Monday, 3 October
2011, it announced that Ralph Steinman, a
biologist at Rockefeller University, was one
of three recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize
in Medicine – unbeknown to the committee,
Steinman had died of pancreatic cancer on
Friday, 30 September.
While a loophole may be found in the
will of Alfred Nobel, a loophole that the
Nobel Committee is no doubt searching for
frantically at this very moment, it appears
unlikely they’ll be able to reverse the
amendment of 37 years ago. No matter how
it’s cut, Steinman did pass away before the
nobel prize
announcement was made. Cruelly, he didn’t
know he’d won; and perhaps even crueler,
that he’d won for work that had extended his
own life. According to a statement put out on
Monday by Rockefeller University, Steinman,
68, "discovered the immune system's sentinel
dendritic cells and demonstrated that science
can fruitfully harness the power of these cells
and other components of the immune system
to curb infections and other communicable
diseases." Steinman had been diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and
had prolonged his life using a “dendritic-cell
based immunotherapy” of his own design.
What the committee will decide in
the tragic case of Steinman remains to be
seen, but meanwhile the joint winners of
the other half of the 2011 medicine prize,
Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann, are
celebrating. Beutler and Hoffmann won "for
their discoveries concerning the activation
of innate immunity." Their findings, which
occurred in the late ‘90s, triggered an
explosion in the identification of TLRs (Tolllike
receptors), which when mutated carry an
increased risk of infection.
In a telephonic interview with the editorial
director of Nobel Media, transcribed on the
tuesday - 4 october 2011