Vatican keeps up attack on Nobel committee over IVF

VATICAN CITY, Oct 5 (breakingnews99.com) - The Vatican kept up its attack on the Nobel committee on Tuesday for giving the medicine prize to in-vitro fertilisation pioneer Robert Edwards, saying he had led to a culture where embryos are seen as commodities.

For the second straight day, it gave the thumbs down to the choice of Edwards, whose success in fertilising a human egg outside of the womb led to "test tube babies" and innovations such as embryonic stem cell research and surrogate motherhood.

The Vatican ratcheted up its negative opinion as several leading Italian newspapers criticised it for its attack on Edwards.

A statement by the Vatican-based International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC), said the group was "dismayed" at the choice.

"Although IVF has brought happiness to the many couples who have conceived through this process, it has done so at enormous cost," the federation said in a statement issued on Vatican letter head.

"Many millions of embryos have been created and discarded during the IVF process," it said, adding that embryos were being used as "animals destined for destruction."

"This use has led to a culture where they are regarded as commodities, rather than the precious human individuals which they are."

NO DEVIL IN THE DISH

A Vatican official's initial negative reaction on Monday to the medicine prize being given to Edwards as "completely misplaced" was splashed on front pages of Tuesday's Italian newspapers, with some editorials harshly critical of its stance.

"The devil is not behind Robert Edwards, as the Church seems to suspect, but a passion for science and an attempt to satisfy the desire that women have for maternity," La Repubblica said in an editorial.

"Edwards helped -- not damaged -- millions of people," said an editorial in the Corriere della Sera while the leftist L'Unita sarcastically ran a headline reading "The Heretic" under a picture of Edwards with two infants born through IVF.

Tuesday's statement by the Catholic medical federation said that "as Catholic doctors we recognise the pain that infertility brings to a couple" but that research had to be carried "within an ethical framework".

While the Catholic Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception, more liberal Christians view the beginning of life less strictly and have fewer qualms about embryo manipulation

US-Japanese team wins 2010 chemistry Nobel

STOCKHOLM , Oct 6 (breakingnews99.com) – An American and two Japanese scientists won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for a tool that makes it easier to build complex chemicals, including those that could help in the fight against cancer.

Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki shared the prize for the development of "palladium-catalysed cross-coupling," the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

"Palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling is used in research worldwide, as well as in the commercial production of, for example, pharmaceuticals and molecules used in the electronics industry," the committee said.

The tool allows scientists to build complex chemicals such as the carbon-based ones that are the basis of life.

Such chemicals include one that is naturally found in small quantities in a sea sponge, which scientists hope can be used to fight cancer cells.

Thanks to the scientists' tool, researchers can now artificially produce this substance, called discodermolide.

"In order to create these complex chemicals, chemists need to be able to join carbon atoms together. However, carbon is stable and carbon atoms do not easily react with one another," the committee said.

It said this meant scientists had to make carbon atoms more active, but this also produced more byproducts when more complex molecules were being created.

"Palladium-catalysed cross coupling solved that problem and provided chemists with a more precise and efficient tool to work with," the committee added.

The prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.5 million) was the third of this year's Nobel prizes, following awards for medicine on Monday and for physics on Tuesday

US/Japanese scientists win Nobel for chemical tool

STOCKHOLM, Oct 6 (breakingnews99.com) - A US and two Japanese scientists won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for inventing new ways to bind carbon atoms with uses that range from fighting cancer to producing thin computer screens.

Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki shared the prize for the development of "palladium-catalysed cross-coupling", the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

"Palladium-catalysed cross-coupling is used in research worldwide, as well as in the commercial production of, for example, pharmaceuticals and molecules used in the electronics industry," the committee said.

Such chemicals include one found in small quantities in a sea sponge, which scientists aim to use to fight cancer cells. Thanks to the scientists' chemical tool, researchers can now artificially produce this substance, called discodermolide.


Heck, now with the University of Delaware in the United States, developed his work on palladium as a catalyst in the 1960s and early 1970s, while the other two came through with their variants of the same process in the late 1970s.

Negishi, who is at Purdue University in the United States, said he was sound asleep when the academy telephoned him at 5 a.m. local time, but was extremely happy to be woken.

"This means a lot. I would be telling a lie if I wasn't thinking about this. I told someone that I began thinking -- dreaming -- about this prize half a century ago."

Suzuki, of Hokkaido University in northern Japan, was also pleased and said science was important for his country.

"I don't know how much longer I'll live, but I want to continue to work to help young people," he told a news conference in Hokkaido.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan welcomed the news his two countrymen had won the prize. "I hope this encourages more young people and children to say 'I'll work hard to win a Nobel prize'," he told reporters in Tokyo.

Joseph Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society and himself a professor at Purdue, said the three worked in parallel for years. "They have just played off of each other," Francisco said in a telephone interview.

NEW CATALYSTS

"Professors Negishi and Suzuki and Professor Heck have developed new catalysts for doing specific types of reactions that connect new atoms and connect new functional groups to allow a broader array of new compounds to be made."

"It revolutionises the kinds of techniques that chemists have available to make new medicines and new plastics and new materials," he added.

The prize does not come as a surprise, Francisco said, because the work is so fundamental and significant.

The main problem the scientists overcame was how to make atoms of carbon, a very stable substance, more active and thus likely to link together to make bigger, more useful compounds.

Using palladium in the reaction meant fewer byproducts were made, giving a more precise and efficient tool for scientists.

The prize of 10 million crowns ($1.5 million) was the third of this year's Nobel prizes, following awards for medicine on Monday and for physics on Tuesday.http://breakingnews99.blogspot.com

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010

Biography Of Andre Geim :

Born: 1958,Sochi, Russi

Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kinged 

Prize motivation: "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material grapheme