Nobel Prize Winner: No Medical Degree, No Doctorate, Just Ancient Chinese Medicine?

[Deleted]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-34451386

Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou helped by ancient Chinese remedy

Tu Youyou has become the first Chinese woman to win a Nobel Prize, for her work in helping to create an anti-malaria medicine. The 84-year-old's route to the honour has been anything but traditional.

She won the Nobel Prize for medicine, but she doesn't have a medical degree or a PhD

Tu Youyou attended a pharmacology school in Beijing. Shortly after, she became a researcher at the Academy of Chinese Traditional Medicine.

In China, she is being called the "three noes" winner: no medical degree, no doctorate, and she's never worked overseas.

She started her malaria research after she was recruited to a top-secret government unit known as "Mission 523"

In 1967, Communist leader Mao Zedong decided there was an urgent national need to find a cure for malaria.

Two years later, Tu Youyou was instructed to become the new head of Mission 523. She was dispatched to the southern Chinese island of Hainan to study how malaria threatened human health.

For six months, she stayed there, leaving her four-year-old daughter at a local nursery.

Ms Tu's husband had been sent away to work at the countryside at the height of China's Cultural Revolution, a time of extreme political upheaval.

Ancient Chinese texts inspired Tu Youyou's search for her Nobel-prize winning medicine

Finally, the team found a brief reference to one substance, sweet wormwood, which had been used to treat malaria in China around 400 AD.

The team then tested extracts of the compound but nothing was effective in eradicating the drug until Tu Youyou returned to the original ancient text.

After another careful reading, she tweaked the drug recipe one final time, heating the extract without allowing it to reach boiling point.

[Deleted]

She successfully created a cure for malaria (kills 600,000 per year) that had been lost since 400AD from what I can see.

That sure does deserve a Nobel prize.

[Independent voter]

Some scientist on a podcast I listen to said she was part of a team and didn't deserve sole credit that they should've split the prize among other members of the team.

[Summer]

And Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotics because he left his samples sitting while on a holiday and they grew mouldy.

A lot of scientific discoveries are pure luck. She worked to find a medicine and succeeded, nothing wrong with looking to natural remedies while doing it as long as scientific principles were used to assess success.

Btw, how does "she left her four-year old daughter at a local nursery" affect her suitability for a Nobel?

[Deleted]

So she read a manual and tweaked it a little, and gets a nobel prize!

Okay sorry, well deserved and a good idea to look to the past for ideas to treat something as dangerous and life ruining as malaria

[Merite]

Btw, how does "she left her four-year old daughter at a local nursery" affect her suitability for a Nobel?

It's more like she was forced to leave and left her child behind instead of putting her child in danger in a place with a ton of disease, or was even forced to leave her child behind. You don't particularly have a choice with communism.

[Barnabas]

Some scientist on a podcast I listen to said she was part of a team and didn't deserve sole credit that they should've split the prize among other members of the team.

And? There can be no more than 3 winners for the prize. If she wasn't the candidate than the malaria medicine would be out. Do you think the other winners didn't have help?

[Arlon]

It's not so amazing as it's made out to be. You don't need a medical or even any degree to do basic empirical science. If we had a systematic review of every substance produced by every species on the earth, we would probably not have any diseases at all. Even our genetic technology is based around the fact that we take parts of other species or just simply make them produce proteins.

[nextormento]

It seems to me the "no medical degree" is a glitch of translation or bad reporting. It could be she does have a medical degree but not the doctorate.

This source from people.cn has is differently

Without a doctor degree, without studying abroad, without membership of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Tu was jokingly called “Three-Without Scientist”. Whereas the former two “withouts” are due to the historical reasons of Cultural Revolution, being rejected by CAS as its member requires reflective thoughts.

Is it because Tu is disqualified in her research to be a CAS member? Apparently not.

Tu is a typical lab scientist who is socially awkward. She is frank about her disapprovals and disinclined towards bootlicking. If such characteristics cannot fully account for her being rejected by CAS, they can at least say something about her integrity as a scientist.

As “the highest academic title in science and technology funded by the nation”, membership of CAS is the weathervane of the scientific field. It is not the Shakespearian question of “What’s in a name”, but the question of authority and respectfulness of CAS, and the question of justifiably assessing the passion and achievements of our scientists. In a more worldly sense, it is about the fund and thus the direction in which the smartest brains of our nation dedicate.

A scientist who is not institutionally admitted wins the highest international acknowledgement. It is high time we reconsider our standards and procedure of granting membership of CAS.

[Pipebomb]

A great deal of information about the traditional uses of plants is still intact with tribal people. But the native healers are often reluctant to accurately share their knowledge to outsiders and involves a long-term commitment and genuine relationship. One plant species per day is being made extinct. Of the plants which are found only in the Amazon rain forest, only a tiny percentage have been tested for their full medical possibilities.

There's an amazing interview/talk between Terence McKenna and Nicole Maxwell about her travels to the Amazon in search of plant based medicine among the native shaman. She wrote ''Witch Doctor's Apprentice'' which described a host of plants she said the Indians used to prevent tooth decay, painlessly extract teeth, dissolve kidney stones, heal burns and cure or prevent scores of other maladies.

A bit of a mind fuck how these people in 400AD were able to find cures...

[Kaleredar]

The OP's headline looks like one of those "you won't believe this one easy secret!" banner ads.

[Deleted]

I don't put my views in OPs but here it is:

I think this is a great story, not because of the use of Chinese medicine or because she's a woman, or because it's in China over half a century ago.

I think this is a great story because it says you don't need advanced degrees, you don't need wealth or advantages, etc - to achieve great and good things in the world.

You just need to want to do something important for society and to pursue it with real dedication and grit.

The world moves forward because of people who do.

[Kurioxan]

I don't put my views in OPs but here it is:

I think this is a great story, not because of the use of Chinese medicine or because she's a woman, or because it's in China over half a century ago.

I think this is a great story because it says you don't need advanced degrees, you don't need wealth or advantages, etc - to achieve great and good things in the world.

You just need to want to do something important for society and to pursue it with real dedication and grit.

The world moves forward because of people who do.

Pretty much. This is known and proven many times but people keep discriminating (as the words meaning not current usage of it) based on it.
People put too much importance in things that dont have that much, senseless elitism for what surmounts to something anyone can do with enough time and money.
Always interesting to see recognition for people, also another fascinating aspect about education vs self taught is that education sometimes tends to limit the scope of practice, it overspecializes and doesnt allow for much lateral thinking and is based on a lot of preconceived notions and limitations that are learned/taught.
A lot of innovations come from people with no formal education and only selftaught in something, that in their ignorance arent limited with preconceived ideas.

Going a bit on a sidetrack there, either way, good for her and hopefully it can be applied and save a lot of people.

[Mayhem]

I don't put my views in OPs but here it is:

I think this is a great story, not because of the use of Chinese medicine or because she's a woman, or because it's in China over half a century ago.

I think this is a great story because it says you don't need advanced degrees, you don't need wealth or advantages, etc - to achieve great and good things in the world.

You just need to want to do something important for society and to pursue it with real dedication and grit.

The world moves forward because of people who do.

I agree with this.

[Deleted]

you have to be a genius to try not to boil something

[Super Friendly Kitty Cat]

Once they gave Obama the Nobel Prize, the prize really has no relevance.

[buck008]

Once they gave Obama the Nobel Prize, the prize really has no relevance.

Says someone who doesn't know the difference between the Nobel Peace Prize and the scientific ones.

On topic, it was an interesting read. Amazing that we've found a positive treatment for malaria since it kills so many people.

[Ripster42]

I don't put my views in OPs but here it is:

I think this is a great story, not because of the use of Chinese medicine or because she's a woman, or because it's in China over half a century ago.

I think this is a great story because it says you don't need advanced degrees, you don't need wealth or advantages, etc - to achieve great and good things in the world.

You just need to want to do something important for society and to pursue it with real dedication and grit.

The world moves forward because of people who do.

I think the government gave her the wealth needed to do this. And from what I think I know about china in the 60s she didn't really have much choice in the matter, so the government might have had some influence on her dedication by possibly keeping her child as hostage.

[Nadiru]

A bit of a mind fuck how these people in 400AD were able to find cures...

I wouldn't call it a mind fuck. People of all types, occupations, etc, had way more time on their hands to do experimental stuff. At some point, sickness got so bad that the healers just said "fuck it, we're gonna try everything."

[Kujako]

I wouldn't call it a mind fuck. People of all types, occupations, etc, had way more time on their hands to do experimental stuff. At some point, sickness got so bad that the healers just said "fuck it, we're gonna try everything."

And no FDA, so we're gona try it on all these poor people!