Will you risk your life on your research? The story H.Pyroli bacteria – the cause of Gastric cancer and Peptic Ulcers and the unlikely experiment that was undertaken to prove the research finding!
The story H.Pyroli bacteria
The cause of Gastric cancer and Peptic Ulcers Barry Marshall’s H.Pyroli theory was shot down by experts, who refused to believe that bacteria could survive in the highly acidic stomach.
When repeated proofs went unacknowledged, Barry did the unthinkable!
He consumed a culture of the bacteria, taken from a patient!
In the painful, agonising period that followed, his test results showed colonisation by the bacteria and the absence of acid to kill the bacteria in the stomach. Now that he proved that bacteria were behind the disease, he then cured himself by consuming antibiotics.
This experiment was published in 1985 in the Medical Journal of Australia and is among the most cited articles from the journal.
In 2005, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Marshall and Robin Warren, his long-time collaborator, “for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease”