Barry Marshall, the Australian doctor who discovered that one could treat stomach ulcers in patients with a single course of antibiotics, is a badass. His discovery was ignored and even ridiculed by established mainstream medicine. He told them to go fuck themselves by drinking a concoction of H. Pylori and “lukewarm beef extract” (yum!), thereby giving himself gastritis which would lead to stomach ulcers - which at the time there was supposedly no known cure for.
He did a baseline test before drinking the bacteria which showed no gastritis. He did a confirmation test after vomiting symptoms arose which confirmed he then had gastritis and then, after a course of antibiotics, a follow up test showed he was now free of gastritis.
Yeah Barry Marshall was a maverick back then. It was a crying shame that he felt he had to do the experiment on himself like that, but at least it precipitated further research confirming his testimonial.
It’s a big risk to run, after all, and could have destroyed his career.
I have… Ambivalent feelings toward the story. Science isn’t supposed to work that way. Ideally, given money and support, he could have tested antibiotics on ulcer patients who were also getting the current standard of care. It would have been so successful they probably would have done an early termination of the report and gotten the standard of care changed in a matter of months. But the establishment’s tunnel vision wasn’t willing to give Barry a chance.
Also, stories like these really encourage the cranks to keep holding onto their Galileo complexes. Barry Marshall was a medical doctor with the education experience and at least enough data to make the conclusions. He did a lot of ground-laying work before he tested his conclusion on himself. But a lot of medical cranks are unwilling to accept that their hunch isn’t in the same league, much less the same ballpark as what Barry Marshall did. Medical cranks are always quick to remind skeptics that “the church imprisoned Galileo even though he was right”, but they never seem to remember that Galileo was doing repeatable research that made solid predictions, and was correct. Instead of vague claims, and appeals to anecdata.
According to wikipedia he tried to do it on piglets but wasn’t able to get the bacteria to thrive in them. Also, if every other doctor was telling patients that this guy’s a kook, what chance do you think he had of getting an actual trial? His stunt forced their hand because it spoke of the strength of his convictions and it worked out exactly as he had suggested which is what differentiates him from pseudoscience cranks. He knew it worked because he had seen it work in the lab.
Sometimes you gotta be a cowboy to prove your point, I guess.
I get that. It’s still feeling like a failure of the scientific community though. It’s supposed to be open enough that new ideas can get tested. And doing a single self-controlled trial on the researcher, who has an interest in the theory’s success, is shaky footing at best.
It’s definitely a positive that his theory ended up being right, and that now we have more empirical research showing that H. Pylori does cause ulcers. But still the methodology of doing a test on yourself like that is rather counter to how science should work.
For every true Galileo, there are 10,000 Deepak Chopras.
A single self-controlled test is way better than no test at all.
When you cannot do it the “proper” way, you still have to do it anyway. Some people don’t take “no” as an answer and they are right.
And that’s why sometimes you aren’t believed even when you are actually right. Or the old farts in charge are just making the progress going at speed that makes glaciers look fast. An experiment on self is then more than warranted.
I wasn’t really aware I was making an argument, but from what I understand*, he is of the belief that what we call the “virus” exists, but that it doesn’t cause the disease. Instead, it is a harmless artifact either generated by people who have caused themselves to have the disease or is something researchers have introduced into their experiments from the outside.
(Admittedly, I may be mistaken; there’s only so much I can stand to read of the available literature even when it’s in english.)
