A doctor working at a modest mid-level hospital made an accidental discovery that was dismissed as nonsense by the medical community. Nevertheless, he stubbornly pursued his research, ultimately earning a Nobel Prize.
In an era where medical research is often conducted at major scientific centers equipped with high-tech devices worth millions of USD, the success story of Robin Warren, 68, is indeed rare.
This Australian doctor, along with his colleague Barry J. Marshall, 54, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005 for their discovery of Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium responsible for various gastrointestinal and stomach diseases.
Before this discovery, it was believed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and lifestyle factors. Consequently, this painful and persistent illness was treated with complex therapies and expensive medications, which often failed to provide a complete cure. In some cases, it led to bleeding and perforation of the stomach lining.
Today, thanks to Robin Warren, humanity knows that 90% of duodenal ulcers and 80% of stomach ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori, and thus can be effectively treated with inexpensive antibiotics.
Happy that his wife… had a stomach ulcer
Win, who has six children with Warren, played a crucial role in her husband’s success as she was the first stomach ulcer patient he successfully treated.
In a media interview, Win shared that Warren was genuinely thrilled to learn she had a stomach ulcer. To this day, she still feels a bit miffed: “He should have shown a little sympathy for me.” But Warren was simply happy because he had a patient to experiment on, someone he believed he could easily treat.
Robin Warren was born on June 11, 1937, in Adelaide, South Australia. After graduating from medical school in his hometown, he moved to work at Royal Perth Hospital, a mid-level hospital in Perth, Western Australia. For 11 years there, he attracted no attention, except for winning a shooting championship four years in a row at a local gun club.
Then one day, he accidentally discovered a large number of spiral-shaped bacteria in a biopsy sample from a patient with a stomach ulcer. “This must be a mistake,” other doctors likely told themselves and promptly dismissed the sample.
Ridiculed and mocked
What Warren observed completely contradicted everything he had learned. Until the early 1980s, the prevailing theory was that bacteria could not thrive in the stomach. Anyone who suggested otherwise was akin to claiming the Earth was flat.
As a result, Warren faced ridicule and mockery from medical researchers of the time when he insisted that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. Despite this, he continued his quiet research. In 1982, he gained a valuable assistant in the form of a young graduate student, Barry Marshall, who was 14 years his junior.
Lacking modern equipment, this pair of Australian doctors sometimes conducted their research in a very “hands-on” manner: For instance, Marshall experimented on himself by ingesting mixtures of gastric solutions containing millions of bacteria to prove that he could develop a stomach ulcer just like other infectious diseases.
Eventually, through experiments on volunteers, antibiotic treatments, and pathology studies, they established the link between Helicobacter pylori and gastrointestinal and stomach diseases, gaining fame and numerous awards in Australia.
Now, Warren and Marshall have also won the Nobel Prize. Yet, they appear quite down-to-earth. Gaeran Lindvall, secretary of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine committee, reported that when he tried to reach the Australian doctors by mobile phone last Tuesday from Stockholm, Sweden, to inform them of their award, he found out that the pair was “having drinks” at a pub in Perth!
