Spectrum | 19.11.2008 | 00:30
Interview: Nobel Laureate Prof. Harald zur Hausen
German virologist Herald zur Hausen shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine this year for his research into cervical cancer. In an age when the scientific community concurred that the deadly disease was linked to herpes, Harald zur Hausen showed that it was actually human papilloma virus or HPV that causes cervical cancer.
An estimated fifty to eighty percent of the population has been infected with HPV at one point in his or her life. Although most people with HPV do not suffer any acute symptoms or develop cancer, they can unknowingly pass it on. Approximately half a million women worldwide are effected by cervical cancer each year, and around half of them die- primarily in the developing world. These deaths are preventable. Zur Hausen is calling for more, less expensive, and easier ways to vaccinate young people against the disease. Our collegue, Jodi Breisler, met with Professor zur Hausen at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg where she asked him what first interested him in researching cervical cancer and the link with HPV, when it went against prevailing thought.
