Washington Post: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, dies at 87

[SNT Gatchaman]

Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, dies at 87

The long-held medical view was that stress caused ulcers. Dr. Warren and fellow Australian Barry Marshall, who shared a Nobel Prize, showed it was a bacteria.

https://archive.ph/V6n3e

The discoveries by Dr. Warren and Barry Marshall at Royal Perth Hospital completely upended long-standing medical assumptions that the stomach’s gastric fluids would kill any invasive bacteria. Yet, for more than a decade, the two researchers confronted a medical community slow to accept their theories and acknowledge their findings.

As Marshall once put it, “To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat.”

Until the studies by Dr. Warren and Marshall, the medical consensus was that ulcers and other gastric troubles were often attributed to stress or lifestyle choices such as eating spicy foods or drinking alcohol.

“With tenacity and a prepared mind [they] challenged prevailing dogmas,” said a statement from the Nobel committee when Dr. Warren and Marshall received the prize for medicine in 2005.

“The idea of stress and things like that was just so entrenched nobody could really believe that it was bacteria,” Dr. Warren once said. “It had to come from some weird place like Perth, Western Australia, because I think nobody else would have even considered it.”

 

[alktipping]

I wish we had more people like these two in medical research who are prepared to think for themselves and not except the path of least resistance to medical dogma. The World of medicine needs to move on from eminence based belief systems to a real understanding for quality controlled research.

 

[Arnie Pye]

Until the studies by Dr. Warren and Marshall, the medical consensus was that ulcers and other gastric troubles were often attributed to stress or lifestyle choices such as eating spicy foods or drinking alcohol.

I wish we had more doctors who wouldn't ascribe so many symptoms to stress. It's one of the many easy dustbin diagnoses that far too many of them use to get the patient out the door. And it is largely patient blaming too since stress is so often assumed to be caused by a patient having a weak personality.

 

[Mij]

There is a subtle difference between a patient who experiences a delayed diagnosis and one whose symptoms are dismissed. Delay can happen for many reasons. The difference may be as simple as having a doctor who asks you to return if your symptoms change or become worse.

Dismissed patients share a more nuanced tale-they are not believed. They’re accused of exaggerating their symptoms- they are 'stressed'.

I was treated for h.pylori 22 years ago and I might have developed gastric cancer in 15 years if it wasn't for my persistence. It took me over 5 years to get tested and treatment!