Australian Nobel winner was a human guinea pig

CANBERRA (Reuters) – An Australian scientist who jointly
won the 2005 Nobel prize for medicine said he became a human
guinea pig and drank a cocktail of bacteria to prove his
theories that ulcers were not caused by stress.

Australian professor Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were
awarded the 2005 Nobel prize for their 1982 discovery that the
Helicobacter pylori bacterium, rather than stress, caused
stomach ulcers and inflammation.

Marshall, who spent Tuesday fielding calls of
congratulations from around the world, said he became a human
laboratory rat to convince skeptics that ulcers and stomach
inflammation were caused by bacterium.

“I didn’t think about it very much and probably I wouldn’t
have done it if I had really thought it through,” Marshall told
reporters in the Western Australian capital of Perth.

The discovery by Marshall, now 54, and Warren, 68, led to
the development of an antibiotics and drug treatment for most
ulcers, overturning the conventional medical thinking of the
time and easing the suffering for millions of people each year.

After drinking the bacteria, Marshall suffered nausea,
vomiting and stomach pain, but overcame the condition with
treatment similar to the regimen of antibiotics and acid
secretion inhibitors now commonly prescribed to sufferers.

He said he had no choice but to give himself the condition
to convince medical skeptics that the bacterium was the cause
and not the symptom of stomach ulcers, which can pre-dispose
people to gastric cancer.

SWALLOW YOUR BACTERIA!

“Somebody had to do it, somebody had to swallow those
bacteria and develop the disease,” Marshall told the Australian
Broadcasting Corp.

“It was the only way you could convince the skeptics.

Warren said the pair were initially reluctant to publish
their findings because of the way Marshall had given himself
the condition and because their findings were so radical.

“At the time everyone thought we were a bit crazy because
the whole thing was so way out in terms of normal medical
teaching in those days,” Warren told reporters.

“For me, it (the Nobel prize) means that they are putting
the official stamp of approval on all the work that I did and
all the trouble that I had and all the disbelief.”

Australian Prime Minister John Howard congratulated the
pair on Tuesday, and said their work had bought relief to
millions of people around the world.

“The research destroyed a myth, very widely held,” Howard
told reporters. “The prize is richly deserved.”

Marshall and Warren, who were working at the royal Perth
hospital at the time of their breakthrough, are the first
all-Australian team to win the Nobel prize for medicine.

Warren is now retired, but Marshall continues to study the
effects of the bacterium on humans and animals.

“I’ve got no imagination. I’m still in the Helicobacter
business,” Marshall said. “But these days we’re doing molecular
studies, cloning, vaccines and all that kind of stuff.

“You can’t study ulcers in Australia any more, because
everyone with an ulcer has been cured, as far as I can tell.”