NOBEL PRIZE PROBE LAUNCHED
COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 18 Dec 2008
Toronto Star – Faith and Ethics Reporter
Swedish anti-corruption agents are investigating allegations that pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca influenced the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine.
"I have formally instigated, or started, a criminal investigation," Swedish anti-corruption prosecutor Nils-Erik Schulz told the Star in a telephone interview from Stockholm yesterday.
Schulz’s investigation was sparked by claims in the European press that AstraZeneca’s sponsorship of two Nobel promotional companies – Nobel Media and Nobel Web – influenced the choice for this year’s prize in medicine. As well, two Swedish academics on the committee have close ties to AstraZeneca – one sits on the company’s board of directors, while the other was a former consultant to the pharmaceutical company.
Part of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded this fall to Harald zur Hausen, a German scientist who discovered the links between human papilloma viruses and cervical cancer. The discovery could be a financial bonanza for AstraZeneca, which holds the patents on ingredients in the vaccines used to fight the viruses.
AstraZeneca stands to make millions from Gardasil, made by Merck, as well as GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix, thanks to patents it holds.
But the pharmaceutical giant denies any wrongdoing.
"Because the Nobel Committee of Karolinska Institute, and not the Nobel companies, elects candidates for the prize, AstraZeneca will not be able to influence who will be awarded the Nobel Prize, nor do we ever seek to," Laura Woodin, manager of media relations for AstraZeneca in the U.S., said in a statement to the Star. Nobel Foundation director Michael Sohlman was equally adamant about the strict separation between fundraising and the selection of Nobel laureates.
"The foundation has 100 per cent confidence in the integrity of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, as we have in the other prize-awarding institutes," Sohlman said in a telephone interview from Stockholm yesterday.
There have been scandals or controversies attached to the Nobel prizes – Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Prize for Peace, although he was nominated five times – but the Star could find no previous suggestion of financial corruption attached to the awards.
The brewing controversy involves Nobel Media and Nobel Web, two Nobel companies that help translate into layman’s language the value of the work of Nobel laureates and also publicize the laureates’ medical breakthroughs. The two companies are partly funded by AstraZeneca.
It also involves two Karolinska professors who participate in awarding the medical prize. Both have ties to AstraZeneca. Nobel Assembly member Bo Angelin sits on the company’s board of directors, which pays $50,000 (Cdn) a year, while Nobel Committee chair Bertil Fredholm was a consultant for AstraZeneca until 2006.
Anti-corruption prosecutor Schulz is also investigating a trip to China by Fredholm, as well as members of the physics and chemistry prize selection committees, earlier this year that was paid for by the Chinese government.
But he expects his examination of ties between AstraZeneca and Nobel organizations to be much more complicated than investigating the trip to China. "All I have at this point is what was in the newspapers, and on the radio," Schulz told the Star.
"Now we are trying to collect written documentation so that we have a basis before we start interviewing people," he said.
Schulz was appointed by chief anti-corruption prosecutor Christer van der Kwast last week. He said it will be several months before a decision is made on whether to pursue charges against AstraZeneca or Nobel officials. "Then I can either close the case, or I can prosecute."
German scientist zur Hauser was named in October as this year’s Nobel winner and he received the award last week, just as Schulz’s investigation was beginning.
Hauser shared the prize with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, both of France, credited with discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Ottawa has committed $300 million to vaccinate Grade 8 girls with Merck’s Gardasil, with more than 8,000 girls already vaccinated in the Toronto area.
AstraZeneca said it supported the work of Nobel Media and Nobel Web in hopes of improving public health.
"Our hope is that this collaborative effort will increase awareness of how medical breakthroughs and new treatments can improve patient health and quality of life," Woodin told the Star in a statement.
The Swedish anti-corruption office made headlines last year when it began looking into allegations that aerospace and automotive giant Saab offered huge, secret "commissions" to promote the sale of its Gripen fighter jet to the Czech Republic and Austria.
Around the same time, Swedish construction company Skanska was the focus of a bribery scandal in Argentina. And in 2005, several Swedish companies, among them Volvo, Atlas Copco and Scania, were linked to alleged kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime under the United Nations’s oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy civilian goods.
"There has been a belief here that corruption is no problem," one Swedish anti-corruption prosecutor told the International Herald Tribune last year. "Now that’s changing."
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