Operation Ranch Hand, spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam.
One half of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine went to Tu Youyou for her discovery of the antimalarial drug artemisinin. Many of us who do research in the biological sciences have felt that this award was long overdue.
The discovery of artemisinin has saved the lives of millions. And so the Nobel is proper recognition for Dr. Tu, for China and for the advancing role of women in science here and around the world.
There is an interesting and illuminating back story to Dr. Tu’s discovery. India’s The Hindu relates the story here:
(In the 1960s North Vietnam and the Vietcong were were at war with the U.S. which had launched a massive invasion, and malaria was rampant in the region. jw) Struggling to deal with a malaria-ridden army, Vietnamese Prime Minister Ho Chi Minh requested Chairman Mao to establish a secret military research programme to look for a cure for malaria within the traditional Chinese medicine. Project 523 (as it began on May 23) began its search for a cure in 1967. It was officially shut down in 1981.
Mao’s prompting led to Tu’s discovery Tiếp tục đọc “For Vietnam: Artemisinin From China, Agent Orange From America” →