ITALIAN NOBEL PRIZE BRIBE CLAIM DENIED

The Nobel Prize committee has dismissed as "absolutely untrue" a claim by former Italian health official Duilio Poggiolini that Rita Levi Montalcini won the Nobel Prize for Medicine jointly in 1986 following a bribe paid by pharmaceutical company Fidia (Marketletter february 21). Margareta Petrini, secretary to the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, said the claim was "so unreal there is no possibility of it happening."

Under questioning by Italian judges, Prof Poggiolini, ex-director of the pharmaceutical service at Italy's Ministry of Health, alleged that Fidia paid the Nobel Committee to ensure that Prof Levi Montalcini won the $290,000 prize, which she shared with Stanley Cohen of the USA for research into tissue regeneration and growth factors. Prof Poggiolini said that Fidia paid $8 million to the prize committee, but that a part of that sum was earmarked to pay for Prof Levi Montalcini's research. He added that he had found out about the payment from Francesco della Valle, the former head of Fidia in Italy.

Prof Levi Montalcini has called the incident a "disgrace" for the entire scientific community. She has received expressions of solidarity and support from the Italian scientific community and from the country's president, Oscar luigi Scalfaro.