Dumb Ideas that Changed the World, Episode 5
Those publicity-seeking opportunists.
Welcome to “Dumb Ideas that Changed the World.” The views expressed are solely those of the host and do not reflect the opinions of this station or its funders.
For today’s dumb idea, meet Barry Marshall. An Australian medical student, in 1982 he claimed that bacteria cause gastritis… then peptic ulcers, then stomach cancer. Bacteria. And that the whole syndrome could be “cured” with cheap antibiotics. This was absurd; everyone knew ulcers are caused by excess stomach acid related to stress. Acid-reducers and surgery were the only treatments. Marshall and his mentor Robin Warren sent their work to respected journals, but nobody wanted to publish quack science.
I can tell you firsthand the best way to deflate a cocky young researcher is to ignore him. But Barry Marshall refused to shut up. He managed to get a letter-to-the-editor in the Lancet, setting him up for the next-worst reaction: attacked and ridiculed, disputed and disbelieved. The only publication interested in his cockamamy theory was the Star. Yes, the supermarket tabloid.
Finally accepted to a conference, people gossiped that his research was “rubbish.” He earned more enemies by calling them criminals for “not eradicating the bacteria.” The now Dr. Marshall was mocked as an opportunist whose results were “premature, not well supported.”
Others took Barry Marshall’s ideas seriously. Not the medical establishment or drug companies, both of which cashed-in billions each year on endoscopies and selling Zantac. When the evidence came in, Marshall was … vindicated. Helicobacter pylori cause 85% of all peptic ulcers. Dr. Marshall then developed a screening test for H. pylori and generic antibiotics to cure the deadly syndrome. It only took 15 years for people to listen.
For saving millions from the scourge of peptic ulcers, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005. Marshall’s chief critic, Dr. David Graham, now says peptic-ulcer disease will become a mere historical footnote.
It turns out that some dumb ideas aren’t so dumb after all.
I’m Jeff Gentry
Best reference: Marshall, B.J. (2023). Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB. Accessed Wed. 9 Aug 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/marshall/facts/>
Dumb Ideas that Changed the World copyright 2023 by Jeff Gentry. All rights reserved.
