On Monday, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were announced as the recipients of the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
Their accomplishment was developing the coronavirus vaccines, right?
Wrong. The prize was, according to the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”
Lesson: Apparently, the Nobel Committee either lives under a rock or simply doesn’t care about the coronavirus vaccine. It was developed in just months, as opposed to years, which is how long vaccines usually take to bring to market. While the public won’t know for 50 years who was nominated for the prize, it seems inconceivable that there weren’t nominations for the developers of the coronavirus vaccines. They should have been the recipients of this year’s prize.
Pfizer and BioNTech (which produced a vaccine together despite being competitors) and Moderna had their vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration in December, one month before the deadline to submit nominations to the Nobel Committee.
Nonetheless, those companies altogether were snubbed despite producing a modern medical miracle. There’s always next year.
Jackson Richman is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Follow him @jacksonrichman.
