AIDS and cancer pioneers win Nobel

Oct 6 - Two French scientists who discovered the AIDS virus and a German who found the virus that causes cervical cancer are awarded the 2008 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology.

Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur won half the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns (1.4 million U.S. dollars) for discovering the deadly AIDS virus that has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the 1980s.

And Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf and a former director of the German Cancer Research Centre shared the other half of the prize for work that went against the conventional wisdom about the cause of cervical cancer.

Joanna Partridge reports.