金秋十月的一天，55岁的美国加州大学生物系教授史坦利·普鲁希纳在马里兰参加联邦食品与药品管理局会议时，他太太打电话，转告他获得了1997年度诺贝尔医学奖，表彰他为发现足以引起疯牛症及人类某些脑部疾病的新病原──“无核酸淀粉糖蛋白”方面的突破性成就。当记者问他有 One autumn day in October, when Stanley Pruhina, a 55-year-old professor of biology at the University of California, was attending the Federal Food and Drug Administration meeting in Maryland, his wife telephoned him and proclaimed him the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine In recognition of his breakthrough achievement in finding “a nucleic acid-free starch glycoprotein” that is a new source of pathogens that can cause mad cow disease and certain brain diseases in humans. When a reporter asked him to have