Editorial

Our congratulations to Professor Madame Francoise Barre-sinoussi, Professor Luc Montagnier and Professor Harald Zur Hausen, who won This year's Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Every year, scientists all over the world salute the Nobel Prize winners because they are symbols of excellence who uplift the spirit of man to greater heights. Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier isolated the HIV virus in 1983.

This could greatly help in identifying and screening contaminated blood. Identification is the first step. Next is the discovery of the vaccine, Zur Hausen "went against current dogma" where he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus or HPV caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumours. Professor Zur Hausen also uncovered a family of HPV types only some of which cause cancer.

The discovery led to the understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection. Combating viral diseases is more difficult. A virus is a very small submicroscopic noncellular agent within a protein coat and may crystallize making the action of antibiotics ineffective. They invade living cells and make them duplicate the virus instead of the cell. After replication, the infected cell dies. HIV and cancer are the greatest killers after the second world war. Indentification of the viruses responsible for them is a formidable task- Now that the pioneers have broken the path, the challenge of developing the vaccines will be taken up more seriously. This is a great battle to protect humanity against our common enemy. Diseases do not recognise national frontiers- They have no racial discrimination. So has to be the battle for health-sans frontiers. Every doctor or scientist who is working to make people more healthy is a soldier in the army of humanity. We are proud of these scientists, for, they belong to all of us. We are sure that their work and inspiration will take the scientists of the world many steps forward.