Tradition Versus Modernity in Biomedical Research:The Choices for India

In 2015, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists. Two of them, William Campbell and Satoshi Omura received it for discoveries in the treatment of roundworm. The third recipient, the Chinese Tu Youyou received the Prize for the discovery of artemisinin, the antimalarial drug isolated from the plant Artemesia annua (sweet wormwood). The discovery of artemesinin has been considered by some as the ‘most significant breakthrough in tropical medicine in the 20th century’. The Nobel Prize to Youyou was an incredible achievement in many ways. It was China’s first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Youyou is a woman scientist with no Ph D, no training overseas, and has had no academy membership (often referred to, therefore, as ‘the professor of three noes’), and the discovery itself for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize was first published in a Chinese journal (in Chinese) in the 1970s, that came to be known to the world only much later.