Nervous Much?

Medicine prize launches Nobel season next week

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The Nobel prize for medicine, called by past winners both an honor and a distraction from research, heralds the start next week of the century-old season of awards founded in the will of the inventor of dynamite.

The winner of the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.3 million) is to be announced on Monday, October 3 at 0930 GMT.

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AVOIDING CONTROVERSY

The prize-giving Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute of medical research has tended to avoid controversy in its awards -- a rare exception being the case of Portuguese scientist Egas Moniz, the inventor of the lobotomy.

U.S. relatives of patients who had treatment, which sought to calm mentally ill patients by severing nerve fibres in the brain, have demanded the prize be withdrawn. They say it led to injury or death for their kin.
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