Nobel Prize awarded for AIDS, cervical cancer research

Two French researchers who discovered the human AIDS virus and a German scientist who showed that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer were awarded Monday the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The decision in effect ends the long-running dispute between France's Luc Montagnier and America's Robert Gallo, concluding that Montagnier and his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi were the discoverers of the virus. More than 33 million people worldwide are HIV carriers. ... Montagnier said he wished that Gallo had shared in the award. "It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he told the Associated Press.

Zur Hausen's work was far less controversial, although his proposal that human papilloma virus, known as HPV, causes cervical cancer was initially disparaged.

But he reasoned that if the virus played such a role, its genes would be incorporated into those of tumor cells, and he spent more than a decade looking for evidence. His work was complicated by the fact that only segments of the virus made it into the tumor DNA.

After a decade of searching, in 1984 he found that one strain, called HPV-16, was in some tumors. The following year, he showed that a second strain, HPV-18, was in others. He then cloned the two viruses and made them available to other researchers.

Those two strains are now known to cause an estimated 70% of all cases of cervical cancer, and vaccines against them, Gardasil and Cervarix, are now beginning to play a crucial role in preventing the disease. - latimes

1932 Nov. 30. Raymond Royal Rife isolates the filtrable virus of carcinoma. Using a super microscope he designed, he sees the cancer causing virus he called BX incorporate itself into cancer cells. He finds a way to kill the virus after many years. He cures cancer. The night before he is to reveal this to the world, his lab burns down, his notes disappear and he is scorned, discredited. There is a murder. People he knew claim to never have known him. Fifty years later, essentially the same claim is made: Cancer is caused by a virus. It is scorned at first.

2001 Dec. 28. Xeno hears about Rife,  writes about him on Xenophilia.com

2008 Oct. 7: A Nobel prize, 76 years after Rife, will be given to Zur Hausen who discovered what Rife did: A virus causes cancer.  Zur Hausen's virus only causes one type of cancer, cervical cancer. Conspiracy theorists claim that curing all cancers would mess up profits for powerful companies too much and would also cause more overpopulation.

Listen to Rife here.