A Good Man Died Today, One Of The Country's Best

Last week when Paul Newman died Pavlov's Cat quoted A Prarie Home Companion, "It's never a tragedy when an old man dies. Forgive him for his shortcomings, and thank him for all his love and care."

By that token, Graeme Laver's death a few days before Newman's, but of which we only heard today, wasn't a tragedy either. Nevertheless, its still sad.

I had the honour of speaking with him a few times, and he seemed like a genuinely nice and caring person. However, if there was any sainthood in him, then it was buried from me. As far as I know he never risked his life for his work, or donated most of his worldly wealth to help the poor. Yet in two stunning achievements he dwarfed the good that Newman did the world through decades of joyous acting, long years of activism and $250 million raised for charity.

Laver's first great achievement was so obscure I'd barely heard of it until today. He discovered a better way to break the influenza virus down into constituent parts, without damaging these parts. The second is slightly more famous. He created such large, clear crystals of neuraminidase, (a component of the flu virus) that pharmaceutical companies have been able to design two drugs, Relenza and Tamiflu to lock onto one of the few stable parts of this everchanging virus and make flu treatment drugs that actually work.

Neither Relenza nor Tamiflu are perfect. Relenza is difficult to take, and needs to be given almost as soon as symptoms start to really be effective. Given the difficulties in telling early flu symptoms from the common cold this is pretty hard. Strains of the flu virus are already showing signs of developing resistnace to Tamiflu.

But the fact remains that when you look at things to be really, really scared of an influenza pandemic lies behind Global Warming and Nuclear War, but ahead of pretty much everything else. The Spanish flu killed 20-40 million in a much less populated world. The next one was always going to be worse, unless someone invented a flu drug first (or a way of making vaccines faster than we can at the moment).

The stockpiles of Relenza and Tamiflu built up around the world give us a fighting chance against the next pandemic, even if the odds are still on dead numbered in seven figures. With any luck there'll be another, better drug in a few more years.

And then there's the matter of the thousands who die of ordinary 'flu every year, and the millions who suffer considerably. Tamiflu in particular has made a difference to a lot of them.

Of course we know that if Laver had chosen to wash cars for a living someone would have made his discoveries eventually. But eventually would probably have been decades later. These don't seem to have been discoveries pipping his rivals by weeks. The years Laver gave us could make all the difference.