The Daily Nightly began on May 31, 2005. As Brian wrote in his first post it aims to provide a narrative of the broadcast day and a window into the editorial process at NBC Nightly News. Brian weighs in every weekday and NBC News correspondents and producers post regularly.
Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004. Read his full biography.
 |
|
 |
|
 |
advertisement
About the broadcast | Biographies
RSS is an easy way to get the news you want as it is updated even if you are not on MSNBC.com. More information about MSNBC.com's RSS feeds.
Podcasting brings you audio and video from each weekday broadcast on your iPod or other portable MP3 player anytime, anywhere. More information about MSNBC.com's podcasts.
Sign-up for our daily e-mail newsletter. It offers a preview of the stories and special reports featured on each weekday broadcast.
In tonight's "Making a Difference" segment we profile an amazing woman, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a native of Tasmania, Australia, who is now a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Today she shared with two others the Lasker Award, America’s premier recognition for biomedical science. Dr. Blackburn’s research focuses on an enzyme called telomerase that helps determine how long cells live and whether or not they become cancerous. It is basic, but it has enormous potential to lead to new cancer drugs as well as diseases associated with aging and stress. You can read a lot more about her, the other winners and the science behind the discoveries on the Lasker Foundation’s Web site.
I would especially recommend the introduction by Dr. Joseph Goldstein, the chairman of the jury and one of the most witty and erudite scientists I know.
You may have heard of Dr. Blackburn in a political context. In 2002 she was asked to join President Bush’s Council on Bioethics set up to advise the White House on questions such as stem cell research. In 2004 she was fired. She was never given a reason, but presumably she was canned because her scientific opinions did not conform to the administration expectations. She received thousands of e-mails and phone calls, almost all of them supportive of her efforts to try to stick with opinions she thought were scientifically correct.
"It was a much bigger reaction nationwide then I had ever expected," she explained to me, "over something that in itself was not a big think. But it was the representation, I think, of something that had been much more consistently happening."
I close tonight’s piece by saying Dr. Blackburn might win the Nobel Prize on Monday when the award for Medicine for Physiology is announced. That is informed speculation. The Nobel committee in Sweden is notoriously secretive. I would bet a lot that Dr. Blackburn will win that prize, but it could take a few more years.
Read more from Robert Bazell
EMAIL THIS
TRACKBACKS
Trackbacks are links to weblogs that reference this post. Like comments, trackbacks do not appear until approved by us. The trackback URL for this post is: http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b0aa69e200d834b81f8a53ef
EAT YOUR SPINACH?
She is doing something wonderful. But since it is "science," I'm sure she will never get any congratulations from our president.
Jane, Southern Mississippi (Sent Sep 30, 2006 2:22:28 AM)
Great article. Dr. Blackburn certainly deserves recognition for her research. And women certainly deserve equal opportunity in the lab. But to suggest more women should go into the Biological Sciences? Excuse me? I would argue that no one hoping for a good career should be entering the Biological Sciences -male or female.
My understanding is that our country is in a financial crisis in regards to Federal funding of scientific research. And accordingly the number of jobs in the field are shrinking fast. The common believe is that the cost of this country's wars abroad and record defense spending leave no money for much of anything else.
My brother has a PhD and also does cancer research. And what I hear are stories of talented researchers leaving the field after doing 3 or 4 post-docs and still unable to land decent jobs. Of Federal funding that used to support research of important proposals that ranked within the 20th percentile, but now require a hit in the 9th percentile or higher. Or talk of prestigious labs, known for producing prodigious volumes of research papers, beginning to wonder if they are going to be able to keep the doors open.
In my opinion, this should be the foremost news story.
Kevin, Los Angeles, CA (Sent Sep 29, 2006 10:36:34 PM)
SEND A COMMENT
PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to this post, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.