Father Joe and the Nobel Prize

I just read that the Swedes have awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine. They gave the prize to two Australians for figuring out that peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria. Why the Swedes? Why ulcers? Why Australians?

Consider the alternatives. Here in the US the Nobel has become the ultimate academic degree. In the United States everyone gets a bachelor's unless they qualify to play basketball. After that we give out master's and Ph.D.s. Oh yeah some folks get MDs, DVMs, TDs, NDs, and ODs. Actually if you decide to become a lawyer, here in Washington state we give you a JD and California awards MDs to anyone who gets an OD. OK?

In reality, the US does recognize a gradation of importance within the Ph.D.. Ph.D.'s in rocket science, for example, are recognized as being far more difficult to achieve then, let's say, Ph.D.'s in college athletics. Any Ph.D. from MIT is more important than, well more important than almost anything ... other than being selected in the football draft. Of course the tile "coach" far exceeds the title "doctor" in importance but few Ph.D.'s aspire to become coaches. What is more prestigous than being a coach?

Back to Sweden. Why Sweden? Actually the Nobel could be given in any of several European countries as long as that country is politically acceptable to the United States. We Americans are the most important pople in the world, but we recognize the greater prestige of the European Ph.D.. Certainly, an Austrian professor of psychiatry with a beard and an obsession with oral sex has more prestige than any UCLA graduate. Ph.D.s a from Oxford and Cambridge and the Left bank (France's main unoversity) are highly respectable as well. All Americans know that the best mathematicians come from Russia and that Asian scientists are very clever but not original. In contrast the English are smart and original. Certainly the Nobel prize could be located in England. It could not, however, be located in Germany, France, or Spain. Germany, as we know, has always been filled with guys that make horrible wars and lose them. The French always lose wars as well, because they disagree with the US of A and are cowards. The Spanish? Don't be silly.

So that leaves Sweden. The Swedes must have a lot of fun deciding who will get the Nobel prize. Has anyone ever made a movie about this? Imagine the dialogue:

Hans: I propose that we give this year's award to Mendel.

Katrina: Isn't he dead?

Christopher: But the Pope just made Mendel a saint. Under Swedish law we cannot discriminate against a spirit simply because it is passed on can we?

Per: (why do we have Catholics on this committee?) This is silly. Who would shake the King's hand? Remember the amateur golfer who won last year's Scandinavian Golf Association? She wasn't dead but she was from California! She said she could not participate in a ceremony in Stockholm in January! Too dark!

Per: In any case, I understand that Mendel faked his data. Look, we need to choose a scientist who shows real courage. Think about Galileo, Curie, Pruissner, .....

Katrina: Courage? Since when is courage important in science? Shouldn't we give an award to Lee Hood?

Goran: Hood? What did he discover? Besides he's an American!

Ahmed: I agree with Goran. Hood is too American. Besides it was guys like Phil Green and Hunckapillar who made it happen! Besides, if we want to award a prize for quantitative genomics shouldn't it go to Botstein and Lander?

Goran: Ahmed, you surprise me! I thought a physiologist like you would help us steer away from fashionable molecular biology! Isn't anybody doing anything clever in rheology? peristalsis? mastication?

Christopher: Mastication? Goran you can't be serious? They can't be anything new in eating food?

Katrina: I think Goran has an idea there! We keep giving the Nobel Prize for things nobody in the public understands. This is supposed to be a prize for Medicine! As they say in the US medicine isn't supposed to be rocket science. It should be simple!

Per: and courageous! Simple and courageous! That kind of Nobel prize should really get the public's attention. I don't think there's been a movie about the Nobel Prize in medicine since that Paul Muni flick about Pasteur. Don't we have a Pasteur today?

Ahmed: I have an idea! There are these two guys in Australia not just in Australia but in Perth....

Goran: (I knew adding a Turk would liven things up!) You mean the guys who figured out ulcer disease? Didn't one of them actually swallow the bacteria?

Katrina: Didn't King Carl-Gustav have an ulcer? I think we have our choice!

And so it goes. Each year the wise faculty of the Karolinska choose the Nobel list for the entire world. These two Australians will proceed from the isolation of Perth in the summer to the mid winter darkness of Stockholm and thence to platforms around the world lecturing not only a peptic ulcer disease but on the courage to follow one's own convictions. This prize sends a message that not all great science is accomplished by large teams. It sends a message that even in the era of the genome grande, small science can still succeed. Somehow I believe that this year's award reflects as much on the unique national culture of Sweden as it does on the worldwide culture of science.

So what is this about Father Joe? When I was a kid, we lived in an Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood. My dad was the Jewish physican (there was a Catholic doctor too for when patients were not sick) and Father Joe the parish priest. My dad was a handsome young war veteran. Some of his female patients would come to the office seeking marital advice. After all Jews are less inhibited than Catholics, don't you know? This embarrassed my father who sent the patients on to Father Joe for counciling. Father Joe, it turned out, was rather good at marital counseling and gave practical lessons. Eventually, Cardinal Cushing discovered Father Joe's activities. Cushing sent the good father to Columbia as a Maryknoll missionary. Courageous folks, the Maryknolls ... leading peasants against the oligarchs. It used to be called "Liberation Theology." As far as I know, Father Joe disappeared. The last time I saw Father Joe, he (secretly) gave me last rites when it appeared I was going to die from a bleeding ulcer. So I associate Father Joe's courage with the courage of these two Nobelists.