Katalin Karikó wins Nobel Prize for medicine

Media outlets celebrate (though not without political overtones) the Hungarian American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize with biologist Drew Weissman for their groundbreaking research that made it possible to produce the MRNS vaccine against Covid.

In Népszava, Miklós Hargitai remarks that except for mathematics and perhaps brain physiology, Hungarian scientist must leave their country to achieve outstanding results, because of the huge cost scientific research implies nowadays. In an aside, he accuses the government of intending to reap political advantages from Dr Karikó’s success, while during the pandemic it was actively seeking to win the support of anti-vaxxers.

In an unsigned comment, Origo lambasts Momentum founder András Fekete-Győr who wrote  on Facebook that many of his generation have chosen studying and working abroad ‘during the years of the Orbán regime’, just as Dr Karikó had to leave Hungary under Communism to become successful. Origo retorts that Fekete-Győr and Momentum are allies of DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány ‘whose predecessors were the ones Dr Karikó fled from’ in her youth to become successful in America.