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Nobel Prize Awarded for Stomach Ulcer Discovery
gollum123 writes to tell us the BBC is reporting that the Nobel prize for medicine has been awarded to two Australian scientists for their work with ulcers. Their research has shown that the majority of ulcers are caused by bacteria and can be cured with a short-term course of drugs and antibiotics. From the article: "Dr Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastic inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium. The Nobel citation praises the doctors for their tenacity, and willingness to challenge prevailing dogmas."
He actually found a cause, and proposed a cure. Most modern barbers are happy to continually treat symptoms since that's what brings in the big bucks.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Don't be silly. The Nobel prize is pretty much the highest award you can receive in the fields where it is awarded - so it's certainly understandable that the committee wants to make sure that those who receive the prize really *have* made a ground-breaking discovery that deserves the prize. And waiting for some time to see what influence a discovery will have is pretty much the only way to find out.
That being said, yes, the discovery was made in 1982, but it wasn't even *confirmed* until 1987, so it's not just the Nobel prize committee, either.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
About time this happened.
;) ), and a month later, she's fine!
My mother was the unfortunate sufferer of a stomach ulcer for almost 30 years of her life.
One day, her doctor finds out she has it (after all, who keeps trying to fix a 30 year old condition that hasn't killed you yet?), and gives her the newly recognised course of broad-spectrum anti-biotics & neutralisers (since the stomach is kinda hard to treat, acidic n all, tends to destroy the anti-biotics before they have an effect
It's scary how long it took for the standard opinion to get torn down, and how simple the final answer really was! In hindsight, the original theory sounds decidedly suspicious. Stress, indeed.
ashridah
Dr. Marshall worked for my dad while he was in Perth. My father said that he was not especially brilliant, although competent - but he was extremely hard-working. Perhaps this is why he did get the Nobel Prize.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
The Nobel Prize committee is almost as slow as Slashdot. The actual discovery, per TFA, was made in 1982.
Similar to what I was going to post. I have known this since 1996 or so, when I heard a presentation by a Dr. Barach. He was saying that the cure for ulcers is tetracycline (antibiotic) and bismuth. In short, antibiotics with a shot of Pepto-Bismol should do it.
The trouble with Dr. Barach knowing this is that, being a veterinarian, he was forbidden to use this knowledge on people. We have this taboo, which is sometimes codified into law (as it was where he practiced) that one person cannot be licenced as both a DVM and an MD.
www.wavefront-av.com
So Ulcers . . . Are not caused by stress?
Peeve alert: starting sentences in the subject line and finishing them in the body is annoying. Just so you know.
Anyway, what I really am posting about, though, is that stress weakens the immune system, giving the bacteria the ability to take hold. There are other, similarly-behaved things, such as eczema (a skin affliction), which is viral, but will mostly only manifest when you are stressed badly.
www.wavefront-av.com
This is cool becasue Barry Marshall was a junior doctor who saw something he couldn't explain and decided to investigate and test it, in classic geeky fashion.
This is what religious fundamentalists/people who push intelligent design will never understand. From the article: The Nobel citation praises the doctors for their tenacity, and willingness to challenge prevailing dogmas. That's the beauty of true science, it's a quest for truth regardless of what was previously "known". If you discover something that conflicts with earlier thinking, not only are you recognized, but you're celebrated. This is because truth, not of centuries of tradition, is the motivating factor behind science.
I mean, just think about what faith is... No matter how much evidence goes against what you believe, you will still believe it anyway. Simply because it was told to you by your parents and your local wizard. It must be pretty amazing that out of the hundreds of religions all over the face of the Earth you happened to be born into the one "right" religion. Science doesn't care where you come from, or who your parents are, it's all the same search for truth. Science is much more unifying than religion.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Some parts have just as much dogma and require just as much faith as faith. Many things that are explained are purely theoretical and cannot be proven with direct observaion. Science may have less dogma, but it has its fair share.
Mod parent up.
This is a very insightful view of what is a real problem with the current practice of medicine . There are many 'syndromes' that are considered to be triggered by lifestyle when actually there are deeper root causes. All too much of medicine is based on statistical studies that show correlations - and correlations do not in any way provide causality.
The real breakthrough in the discovery of a bacterial cause of ulcers is the spotlight it places on the worth of really finding the root cause of a problem rather than just hand waving and correlative studies. Hopefully the medical profession and medical research takes this lesson seriously because it provides a path to real progress in treatment of many debilitating serious chronic diseases. We spend too much time treating symptoms rather than auses and it drives the cost of medical care sky high.
Drug companies don't like this kind of science (i.e.. that actually gets to the science behind the illness). Antibiotics are a few bucks for an entire course. They want you on chronic meds, not "cured."
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I mean, just think about what faith is... No matter how much evidence goes against what you believe, you will still believe it anyway.
Faith is an essential means to remain optimistic in an uncertain world. Faith is belief in the face of doubt / the absurd. Faith is arguably very important to scientific discovery, lest one doubt their hypotheses.
On the other hand, blind believe in the face of evidence strikes me more as dogmatism. And there certainly has been a lot of that in the history of science.
-Stu
Remember this when you hear all the talk about cholestrol and the drugs to treat it.... (Just a hint)
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
In your statement above, replace intelligent design with macro evolution and religious fundamentalist with mainstream scientist and see how it reads. The guys fought against OTHERS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY for YEARS trying to show that they were right. Religious fundamentalists arent the only ones to exhibit such closed minded properties. As I have stated in other posts, scientists have funding that are dependent on 'success'. I work at a research lab in academia. People aren't always after the truth. They are after way to make the funding keep coming in. I am not saying everyone is like this, but a scientific view that goes against the mainstream tends to loose funding. Your view of science of this happy place where everyone accepts new ideas no matter your background is somewhat naive.
Concerning an excess of heat. Don't forget that putting interstitial hydrogen into a metal is an exothermic process. We could generate heat, in fact we scared the h*ll out of ourselves with one of the 'deuterium gas in titanium' experiments. It generated so much heat that we were afraid about the strenght of the container. Pure hydrogen exploding into air could really ruin your day. This also produced counts in a neutron detector, but these were consistent with the known temperature sensitivity of the detectors. So, we did see heat, but only heat that could be understood in terms of basic chemistry.
I will state that I was rather skeptical of the whole topic, but I did work for the DOE and I would have been happy to be proven wrong. Free, clean energy is worth more than my pride. So, even if the odds were a million to one against success, the DOE is justified in studying this topic. There just were not results that could be reproduced. As Fermi noted, 'Anything worth doing once is worth doing twice.' If you can't do it twice, it isn't science.
Please, prove that this works. But extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Finding a way to overcome nuclear forces (potential barriers of millions of electron volts) with electrostatic forces at THERMAL energies (tens of milli electron-Volts)is an extraordinary. Perhaps something like sonoluminescence can produce very high localised temperatures in a jar of water, but this produces light with a few electron volts. The probability of particles tunneling across a barrier varies as exp( -E/kT) as long as E is millions of electron volts and kT is around 60 meV, you have a number like exp(-10^7). These basic considerations make CF an extraordinary claim. Where is the extraordinary evidence?
Think global, act loco
This Nobel-winning research open up some people's minds that other chronic diseases might be due to infectious agents also. Some people have suggested that artery plaques and inflamation- the precursors of heart attacks and strokes- might be caused by germs such as a variant of the clymadia bacteria. Some people suspect a role in cancer too. Only a couple of cancers are known for sure such as Karposis and Hep-C liver cancer, but others are suspected. Considering that decades of low-level research havent firmly resolved the issue one way or the other, its still somewhatof an open question. Should the answer be "yes, some", then other kinds of phrophlactic treatments could be suggested.
1) H. pylori is very common in the general population (not just people with ulcers). If it's a causative agent, why do comparatively few people with H. pylori get ulcers?
2) The inflammation that makes un ulcer hurt also destroys H. pylori. Ergo, no bacteria in the ulcer under a microscope, and no bacteria on cultures.
The drugs you mention were so successful because they, along with the work recognized by the Nobel committee, have largely eliminated the need for ulcer surgery, which used to be among the most common operations performed. In retrospect it seems obvious to look for an infectious etiology, but that's why they've been awarded the prize, I guess.
Well, it took two decades, but Robin Warren and Barry Marshall are finally being honored for making sense of something we pathologists had all seen right in front of our noses but ignored.
What I really love about their work is that it was done with the conventional clinical tools that had been available to pathologists and gastroenterologists for decades, even in non-academic venues. Their example illustrates that great work can still be done without employing multimillion-dollar labs, big grants, and multi-institutional cooperative groups.
Ed Uthman, MD
Pathologist, Houston/Richmond, TX, USA
Why do I need anyone to "approve" a drug for me. The FDA has no business telling me what I can and cannot put into my body. If I thought the guy had a point, why should the government tell me I can't take his medicine. Oh, thats right, I need a perscription, so someone else (a doctor) can tell me what I can and cannot put into my body. You people are quick to blame the big bad drug companies, but look at the FDA too. Big drug companies are the only ones that have the money to wade through the approval process, it is impossible for a small guy to get a drug approved and marketed on his own.
"brxref
Hmmm..
I'll bet what you need to make you feel better is some of Professor Smith's Patented Emulsified Snake Oil (cures all manner of discomfort and sickness, you know).
Here, have a swig...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.