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THIS WEEK: The Farm Bill passed by Congress this week did not include stricter work requirements that would have pummeled food stamp recipients, but it wasn’t for lack of trying by Texas’ Republican delegation. The failed, year-long effort spearheaded by Midland Congressman Mike Conaway would have pulled food stamps from an estimated million people over the next decade. “God … expects personal responsibility and he expects us to have responsible policies that pull us up and out of a cycle of dependency,” said Lubbock Representative Jodey Arrington.
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The Lede
Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)
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- Just a few years ago, Jim Allison was considered something of a “snake oil salesman” by other cancer researchers. The ruddy-faced, scraggly-haired scientist from Alice is used to forging his own path. He fought his high school teachers who refused to teach evolution. Later, he became convinced that the body’s immune system could be harnessed to combat cancer, even as colleagues said it would never work.
- It turns out Allison was right. Now chair of immunology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Allison was in Sweden Monday to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Japanese immunologist Tasuku Honjo.
- Allison developed the first immune checkpoint inhibitor drug. His research led to life-saving treatments for patients who had little chance of survival. Now, Allison is focused on broadening the efficacy of immunotherapy.
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From the archives
Remembering Nadine Eckhardt
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- Legendary Austinite and politico Nadine Eckhardt died Saturday, December 8, 2018, at age 87. As Robert Leleux wrote in his review of her memoir, Duchess of Palms, if Billy Lee Brammer’s The Gay Place is “Austin’s Arthurian legend, then she [was] its Guinevere.” His review, below, was originally published by the Observer in 2009.
- Though Eckhardt is oft-noted for her marriages to famous men — including Brammer and, later, Congressman Bob Eckhardt — she also worked as an assistant to Molly Ivins and LBJ, and campaigned for Ann Richards. Her daughter, Sarah Eckhardt, is the first female Travis County judge.
- From Leleux's review: “Eckhardt does seem freewheeling, possessing (at 77!) an almost rock’n’roll vigor and sex appeal. She looked impossibly young on that soft November evening, all wide eyes and bouncy red bangs — features that, I’m sure, have often distracted men from noticing her stiletto mind. Robert Caro, interviewing her for his celebrated LBJ biography, reportedly called her the most perceptive person he’d ever spoken to regarding Lyndon Johnson. Her home is bohemian but orderly, and rafter-packed with paintings and sculpture of herself (gifts from her many admirers). Despite this, Eckhardt seems to have developed the indifference toward good looks of a woman who’s grown bored with being a beauty.”
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