Rape survivor nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

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Amanda Nguyen testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

A RAPE SURVIVOR who authored the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights and founded a national civil rights organization for fellow survivors has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

In a rare bipartisan action, Amanda Nguyen was nominated for the prestigious honor by Rep Mimi Walters, R-CA. and Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, according to a press release from Rise, the advocacy group founded by the 27-year old Nguyen.

The two California lawmakers nominated Nguyen for her “unprecedented efforts in bringing equal protection under the law and basic human rights to all survivors of sexual assault, regardless of geography.”

Nguyen felt “powerless, invisible and betrayed” when, after a four-hour forensic sexual assault examination for evidence extraction following her rape in 2013 while attending college in Massachusetts, law enforcement officials proceeded to attempt to destroy her rape kit before the statute of limitations had expired. In response, she wrote the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act, which was added to the federal criminal code by President Obama and approved by unanimous vote in Congress in 2016.

The Survivors’ Bill of Rights specifically and explicitly states that survivors have the right for their rape kit to be preserved for the length of the case’s statute of limitations, the right to be notified if an evidence kit is set for destruction and the right to be notified of the results of their rape kit.

“Up until [the Sexual Assault Survivor’s Bill of Rights] was passed, every six months, I had to try to save my rape kit from destruction,” Nguyen told WomensHealthMag.com in an earlier interview.

Rape kits have been used to identify DNA from suspects and have been credited with leading to prosecutions. Despite their importance, many law enforcement agencies are years behind collecting data from these rape kits. Some had even destroyed them as soon as six months after the crime. The law impacts nearly 25 million estimated rape survivors in the United States

Because most sexual assault cases are handled by state law enforcement, the federal bill of rights is more of a guideline and an attempt to raise awareness on the issues affecting survivors.

“The problem is that the Act applies only in federal sexual assault cases, and not in state cases where the vast majority of sexual assaults occur—that is, unless the individual state has passed the Act,” Adrienne Lawrence, a California attorney and victim advocate, told Ms.

“Just 14 states have passed the Act so far, which means a number of sexual assault victims across the nation do not and will not have guaranteed rights. Failing to ensure survivors have adequate rights undermines the notion that our justice system is as committed to ending the crime of sexual assault as it is to ending other forms of crime. The Act is necessary because, in a number of states, victims are not informed about what will happen with their rape kits and the kits get destroyed, which basically destroys evidence of a crime and limits the victim’s ability to get justice.”

In a hearing last week before the Senate Judicial Committee to discuss the law's implementation, Nguyen noted her Nobel Peace Prize nomination:

"Yesterday, I had the incredible honor of being formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. When most people think about peace, the work that my team is engaged in may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But the truth is for the estimated 35 percent of women on Earth who are survivors of sexual violence, access to justice is a necessary prerequisite to true peace. Their lives are the invisible war zones that corrode human potential and hold back the promise of a just world. Their powerlessness is our shame.

"This is a peace that we all - Senator, citizen, advocate from any corner of the globe - can help deliver. We can hold a light up to this darkest corner of human experience, and allow survivors at last to be seen, to be heard, to be believed, to be empowered.”

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Google doodles Indian/American Nobel Prize winner

HAILED for constructing the first synthetic gene, Nobel Prize winner Har Gobind Khorana would have been 96 today, Tuesday, Jan. 9 - that's the date of birth in his documents, although the exact date remains uncertain.

In the Indian/American scientist's honour, Google is changing its logo in 13 countries to a doodle (above) - or illustration - of him and his DNA work.

From Nobel Lectures, this is his story:
Har Gobind Khorana was born of Hindu parents in Raipur, a little village in Punjab, which is now part of eastern Pakistan. The correct date of his birth is not known; that shown in documents is January 9th, 1922. He is the youngest of a family of one daughter and four sons. His father was a «patwari», a village agricultural taxation clerk in the British Indian system of government. Although poor, his father was dedicated to educating his children and they were practically the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people.

Har Gobind Khorana

Har Gobind Khorana attended D.A.V. High School in Multan (now West Punjab); Ratan Lal, one of his teachers, influenced him greatly during that period. Later, he studied at the Punjab University in Lahore where he obtained an M. Sc. degree. Mahan Singh, a great teacher and accurate experimentalist, was his supervisor.

Khorana lived in India until 1945, when the award of a Government of India Fellowship made it possible for him to go to England and he studied for a Ph. D. degree at the University of Liverpool. Roger J. S. Beer supervised his research, and, in addition, looked after him diligently. It was the introduction of Khorana to Western civilization and culture.

Khorana spent a postdoctoral year (1948-1949) at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich with Professor Vladimir Prelog. The association with Professor Prelog molded immeasurably his thought and philosophy towards science, work, and effort.

After a brief period in India in the fall of 1949, Khorana returned to England where he obtained a fellowship to work with Dr. (now Professor) G. W. Kenner and Professor (now Lord) A. R. Todd. He stayed in Cambridge from 1950 till 1952. Again, this stay proved to be of decisive value to Khorana. Interest in both proteins and nucleic acids took root at that time.

A job offer in 1952 from Dr. Gordon M. Shrum of British Columbia (now Chancellor of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia) took him to Vancouver. The British Columbia Research Council offered at that time very little by way of facilities, but there was «all the freedom in the world», to use Dr. Shrum's words, to do what the researcher liked to do. During the following years, with Dr. Shrum's inspiration and encouragement and frequent help and scientific counsel from Dr. Jack Campbell (now Head of the Department of Microbiology at the University of British Columbia), a group began to work in the field of biologically interesting phosphate esters and nucleic acids. 

In 1960 Khorana moved to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin. Two years later, Khorana, Robert W Holley and Marshall W Nirenberg were awarded jointly the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis".

He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1966. As of the fall of 1970 Khorana has been Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Har Gobind Khorana was married in 1952 to Esther Elizabeth Sibler, who is of Swiss origin. Esther brought a consistent sense of purpose into his life at a time when, after six years' absence from the country of his birth, Khorana felt out of place everywhere and at home nowhere. They have three children: Julia Elizabeth (born May 4th, 1953), Emily Anne (born October 18th, 1954), and Dave Roy (born July 26th, 1958).

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