The first of this week’s Nobel Prizes has been announced. Once again the prize committee have shown themselves incapable of picking one winner. Instead the 2008 prize for medicine has gone to three people.

Half the prize goes to Harald zur Hausen “for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer”. (Nicely topical given the current rowing over the HPV vaccine.)

The other half is split equally between Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier “for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus”.

Europe 3 : 0 America.