I think I’m most proud of the fact that so many of the drugs have really been useful in saving lives. I’ve run into people whose lives have been saved, and the kind of satisfaction that you get from having someone come up and say, “My child had acute leukemia and your drug saved him.” Or, “My little girl had herpes encephalitis, and she is now cured, she is back at school. She is doing very well. People told me that she might be mentally affected, but she is not.” I run into people who have had kidney transplants for 20 years who are still taking the drug. And I don’t think that anything else that happens to you can match that type of satisfaction.
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Gertrude B. Elion
Biochemist and pharmacologist; Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine
United States · 1918–1999
Science and medicine
About
Pharmacologist at Burroughs Wellcome who, with George Hitchings, developed drugs for leukaemia, gout, malaria, herpes and the rejection of transplanted organs. Shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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