Pa 3) In 1983, Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren cultured the organism
ID: 152161 • Letter: P
Question
Pa 3) In 1983, Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren cultured the organism (Helicobacter pylori) shown on the right from inflamed stomach tissues. They hypothesized that it was the bacterial cause of peptic ulcers and gastritis. Many scientists and physicians scoffed at that suggestion because they did not believe that bacteria were capable of growing in the very acidic environment of the stomach (the pH of the stomach is like battery acid). In order to prove that the bacterium he had isolated caused gastritis, and in the absence of a suitable animal model, Marshall decided to drink the bacterial culture of H. pylori that he had obtained from the stomach tissues. Within three days he suffered a severe inflammation of his stomach. After 10 days, Marshall had an endoscopy performed and it revealed signs of gastritis. H. pylori was isolated from his inflamed stomach tissues. Postscript: Marshall and Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005. Describe in a few sentences what set of rules Marshall was attempting to satisfy and why you think he chose such an extreme experiment. Explain how his actions related to the set of rules you named above.Explanation / Answer
Marshall was attempting to make a point that Helicobacter pylori was responsible for gastritis (gastric ulcers) and stomach cancer because he had observed same kind of organisms in both the cases.
He wanted to disprove the then believed theory that ulcers are caused due to stress and the complaining patients were given tranquilizers which had no positive effect, and because no organism can survive in such acidic condition in the stomach so how can H.pylori be responsible for ulcers ?
Therefore to disprove both , he carried out this extreme experiment.
He had to drink H.pylori himself because he was unable to infect the animal model (lab mice) with H.pylori so he thought it will infect only primates and because he couldn't test this infection on an human because of ethical issues, so he tested it on himself and got infected too and when given antibiotics, he recovered and survived.
Therefore, he concluded that ulcers can be treated with antibiotics.
He proved that cheap, reliable and available diagnostics are as much important in medicine just as treatment.
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