Did a Drug Company "Buy" One of This Year's Nobel Prizes?

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 16:07 in Health & Medicine

They say it's Sweden's silly season, a time when journalists are desperately seeking a new spin on a century-old story: the Nobel Prizes.Last week, as luminaries gathered for Nobel Week in Stockholm, Radio Sweden reported a potential scandal surrounding the Physiology or Medicine prize. Allegations were swirling, the state-owned station said, that London-based drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, PLC, had, in essence, paid off members of the Nobel voting committee to help secure a win for Harald zur Hausen for his discovery that the human papilloma virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer. (HIV can increase the risk of HPV-related diseases, and zur Hausen shared the Nobel with two scientists who discovered HIV.) [More]

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