Protecting workers from disease is crucial. Medical monitoring and medical research are crucial factors to saving lives and lowering costs. This morning, James Rothman, Randy Schekman, and Thomas Sudhof got phone calls from Geneva. They learned that their basic research into how cells work gained them the recognition from the Nobel Committee for the 2013 Nobel Prize In Medicine Or Physiology.
Their prize is the example of how basic research into the nature of the world around us is can be incredibly important in treating disease. These tiny actions of a normally functioning cell seem irrelevant to the larger world, but that all changes when things go wrong. Südhof told the Lancet in 2010 that this basic science, is not a "field, but an approach: 'solid descriptive science,' like neuroanatomy or biochemistry, disciplines that cannot claim to immediately understand functions or provide cures, but which form the basis for everything we do." Sadly in the budget fights and government show down, federal funding for these basic research projects are being defunded and cut. This has even recently impacted one of today's winners: Rothman lost his NIH funding for the research he won the award for.He told the AP that he hopes that the Nobel Prize will mean his grants will get funded in the future if he re-applies. Award winning research All spent decades unraveling different parts of the cellular transport system. We might sometimes see cells as we did in middle school, as a dish shaped blob with a center nucleus as the command center and multiple other static organs. But that's not really the case. Our... |
