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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."
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. He even tested the theory by drinking H.Pylori and got the mother of all stomach aches afterwards.
This proves that it is still possible to do great medical research in the mould (sorry) of Fleming and Penicillin, and you don't need a $100m research budget.
He suffered a lot of problems getting the medical establishment to believe him, and it took at least 20 years, but once it did, the Nobel was bound to happen sooner or later.
Good on you Bazza
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Possibly the best quote from a scientist ever (my emphasis):
From another BBC article
Mr Warren said he was a "little overcome" by the award.
"It is nice to be officially recognised and it gives some sort of a stamp of approval, but we believed it within a few months because it was so bloody obvious," he told reporters.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
Peppermint oil.
Seriously - been on them for a week, no symptoms. Not a cure, but a hell of a better life.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Years before this discovery was made, stomach ulcers like so many other health problems always used to be labelled by the doctors as a "stress" or "lifestyle" related condition, without any proof that anything more definite than that was really directly responsible. Even to this day, it is amazing that medicine still has literally thousands of loosely-defined medical "conditions" and "syndromes" which have no known specific cause but which are nonetheless given proper names for doctors to use as convenient diagnostic labels. Doctors are still trained to diagnose these "conditions", rather than to think harder about possible underlying cause(s). The two scientists in this story were brave enough to challenge the conventional wisdom of their peers that stress and lifestyle factors cause stomach ulcers. It's interesting to wonder how many other "conditions" are actually caused by undetected bacteria or viruses which are waiting to be discovered by scientists prepared to challenge the prevailing dogma.
Scroogle
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Nobel prize, on the other hand, is awarded purely for groundbreaking research, usually on the basis of a single seminal piece of research but sometimes something more like a 'lifetime acheivement' award. In almost all cases, it is awarded long after the original research, when the impact can be properly judged in the historical context. For many Nobel lauriates, the work they received the prize for was an exception in an otherwise ordinary career. And in some cases, (the physics prize for the 3K microwave cosmic background comes to mind) the recipents were not actually scientists, but just stumbled upon the discovery by accident.
Perhaps another reason for delay in acceptance of these findings, was that up until the early 90's the * worlds biggest selling drug * was one that inhibits stomach acid production and under patent - unlike cheap as beans & generic broad spectrum antibiotics.
Rather chilling when you consider one of the body's mechanisms of protection against bacteria is stomach acidity. Hence why European versions of this drug include the ancient antibiotic bismuth (also found in a famous pink stomach medicine)
So treating a symptom and possibly making it worse in the long run; good business plan - almost as graceful as nicotine enlarging airways and easing breathing: early adverts recommended cigarettes as a cure for bronchitis!
"We propose that this condition is not precipitated by an agitated state of humors, but by tiny microbes". The stress model of disease has always been a bit too subjective and artificial for me. Stress is still generically cited as being responsible for heart disease and depression. It's not even so much that stress is blamed, but the assumed endpoint of a personal reaction. Stress is supposedly something we can control... a reaction to the events of our day. Treating as it presently is, it's almost like a supernatural power. Stress may be associated with events and feelings, but it's also a cascade of chemical messengers that are amenable to study. Why not dig deeper into what reactions and dynamics the release of glucocorticoids and norepinephrine induce? There is a medical prejudice against things brain related. If diabetes was primarily associated with a mood disorder, would it have been researched as well? I guess the special case argument for the ignorance of microbes in ulcers has to do with the assumption that bacteria don't grow well in the environment of the stomach, but still. Any identifiable condition that is currently written off as an intangible artifact of one's personality type seems ripe for rediscovery, and there are still plenty, especially in gastroenterology and physchiatry. It's no surprise to me that this discovery was in the GI field. It's this lack of basic research that keeps open a market for herbalists, homeopaths, and their ilk.