Letters to the editor
Nobel Prizes overlook veterinarians
I agree with Abraham Verghese's Vantage Point ["A prize tarnished," Oct. 15, 2008] that there was a certain pettiness with regard to the recent exclusion of Robert Gallo from the Nobel Prize, but some of the arguments as to why he deserved it are not entirely persuasive. There have been several Nobels associated with the role of retroviruses and cancer, specifically Rous (1966), Temin and Baltimore (1975), and Bishop and Varmus (1988). As a veterinarian, it is distressing that only a single veterinarian, Peter Doherty, has been awarded the Nobel Prize—despite the profession's many accomplishments in infectious diseases and medicine.
Much of what we know of human virology comes from the study of animal viruses. Persistent infections of livestock due to the agents we now know as retroviruses were known almost 100 years ago to the veterinary profession. In 1954, Icelandic veterinarian Bjorn Siggurdsson enunciated what was a revolutionary concept of infectious diseases: "slow infections." He put several diseases into this classification: visna (a paralytic disease of sheep), maedi (a pulmonary disease of sheep), rida of sheep (which we Americans call "scrapie") and Johne's disease (an enteric mycobacterial infection of cattle). Now, we know that visna and maedi are caused by the same retrovirus and—like the viruses causing feline and simian immunodeficiency—they belong to same family as HIV. These animal model systems have provided enormous insights into the pathogenesis of retroviral infections.
My point is that the contributions of veterinarians to science are frequently overlooked. When Carlton Gadjusek, and later Stan Prusiner, received Nobel Prizes for their work on what are now called prion diseases, William Hadlow, who worked with them, was never mentioned. But it was Hadlow who pointed out to Gadjusek in a letter to Lancet in 1959 that the lesions, epidemiology and physical characteristics of kuru were strikingly similar to those of scrapie and that perhaps he would benefit from the "veterinary experience with scrapie by inoculating it into nonhuman primates." Gadjusek did, and 18 months later, we knew that humans could get "slow viruses" too.
But, enough…let's see what happens to James Thomson, a veterinary pathologist at the University of Wisconsin. He is often credited with discovering stem cells. Will he be a Nobelist, or will it be awarded to a physician or basic scientist?
Linda Cork, DVM, PhD
Professor and chair of comparative medicine
Reduce costs of diabetes drugs
As a student at Stanford, I read with interest your article on "More bang for buck?" (Oct. 29, 2008). The piece effectively portrayed the problem of rising costs for diabetes drugs, but I noted that the article failed to mention the access to these drugs for the people who suffer from it the most—low-income individuals.
In my hometown of Merced, unaffordable medical care is a huge problem for a large portion of the population. Having witnessed family and personal friends struggle with the health-care system, I have seen the disparities in health-care access not only in my community, but also across the country. Low-income people who are often uninsured suffer from diabetes disproportionately, and the rising costs only aggravate the inaccessibility to drugs.
I believe that increasing access should be more at the forefront of the discussion of diabetes drugs. I hope that the Stanford School of Medicine would use its influence in the community to draw more attention to this issue.
Racquel Enad
Class of 2011