Barry Marshall Interview (page: 8 / 8) Nobel Prize in Medicine	Print Interview

Can you tell us a bit about the other areas you're starting to explore?

Barry Marshall: Well, we found that we had a tiger by the tail with this bacteria. Not only did ulcer patients have it. That's pretty simple -- they wanted treatment with antibiotics -- but more than half the people in the world are infected with helicobacter. Now, in the U.S. it's 30 percent. It's more likely to be older people who might have picked it up in the Second World War, in the trenches, or in some poor conditions that they were living in, some hollow in West Virginia where they didn't have running water and the toilet wasn't properly connected or whatever. So people who are older and were alive before the Second World War can have it. Younger people born in the U.S. probably wouldn't have it, but people who were born outside the U.S. that immigrated in, more than half of them would probably have the bacteria. So this sort of interesting combination is going on, and these people would still get ulcers and they're susceptible to stomach cancer. That's the U.S. scene.

In India or Africa, China, Russia, where conditions have been very poor over the last 50 years, more than half the population has the bacteria. It's not terribly expensive, but they can't afford to spend $50 on an antibiotic treatment for their stomach complaint. Many of them, in fact, have no symptoms. It may be that if you catch it when you're very, very young, two years of age, your acid level is dampened and you never get enough acid to get symptoms or ulcers, and it festers away there. You may get a very marginal form of malnutrition. In England, children with helicobacter were found to be slightly shorter, about a centimeter shorter than the control group. Maybe it sets you up to be more susceptible to other infections that could kill you, such as cholera, and there's some literature on that.

So in some ways, helicobacter is kind of like dandruff on the stomach. It's abnormal, it causes an irritation, but many people would go out and fulfill their normal lives and not even know about it. However, it does set you up for ulcer, or possibly a one percent chance of stomach cancer. So I'm in favor of treating everybody and wiping the whole thing out. But of course, we don't have the tools to do that now. We don't have simple diagnostic tests. We don't have a free antibiotic therapy. The concept of treating half the world with antibiotics is pretty horrific to most doctors, because of these resistant bacteria that would develop. The only possible solution is a vaccine. So many companies now are looking at vaccine ideas, and putting millions of dollars into a vaccine. But it's not going to be very profitable, because the patients will only take it once. And the people who need it can only afford to spend a couple of dollars on it, so World Health won't buy it. So, in some ways it's going to be a long haul I think to finish the helicobacter story.

Of course, the other side of it is the ecological or evolutionary aspect of it. How long has mankind had helicobacter? Supposedly, they found some helicobacter genes in pre-Columbian mummies in Latin America. I've spoken to an Egyptologist, and he's going to try and get me some Egyptian mummy stomachs, we can cut up to see if we can find the bugs.

So you're not finished?

Barry Marshall: No. There's a lifetime of work in it. There are literally thousands of scientists now in the helicobacter business.

I've got a lucky combination of a team of scientists working with me on interesting questions that I'm curious about. I also have some connections with industry, so if we have a good idea for new treatment or a new test, we can try it out on the patients, who are always very, very willing to take part in my research. They say, "Well, he did it on himself, so we can trust him, I suppose."
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Integrity

We bring products into the mainstream medical treatment very quickly, in a year or so, we hope.

Are there ever any moments where you think, there's something totally unrelated that I'd love to do?

Barry Marshall: Well, basically I'd like to be Mick Jagger. But since I can't be Mick Jagger -- you know. Obviously there are things like that that I would like to do.

One of the things my wife says is that she actually has five children. She's got the four children and me, and that I never grew up. A lot of doctors seem to be in this category, in that they have always got this childish curiosity, and they go into med school because they can't face life, and they know it will be seven years before they actually have to make a real life decision. And then if you stay in medicine and train further for a specialty, you can postpone this real life event, if you like. And then if you can go into research... Well, actually you never have to finish. I think that's the ideal choice.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Passion

But I have other interests. I'm very interested in computers, information. I've always had that as a hobby. I have a research foundation and a helicobacter web site where you can see pictures of helicobacters and people from America Online can send me e-mails night and day. So it gets a big hectic at times, but it's a lot of fun.

Do you think you've got a lock on the Nobel Prize?

Barry Marshall: If I say that, that's one sure way of not getting it. So I've just canceled that off the agenda.

Does it matter?

Barry Marshall: No. I'd have to say that really the pinnacle of anything I ever received was the Lasker Prize. This is very, very close, this weekend here at Jackson Hole. It's amazing the people that I've met here. But the Lasker, there were about 100 Nobel laureates at the ceremony. The fellow who won it at the same time with me was Dr. Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel, who won the Nobel Prize the year after they won the Lasker. If I never win any more prizes I'll be perfectly happy. I've far exceeded anything that I would have expected out of my research career.

I'm not all that young now, and my kids are partially grown up, but I've got these years ahead of me and so what am I going to do to top this? Well, I think I'd get a lot of satisfaction out of being useful and creating some jobs and training new scientists, and being a positive influence on people who might be interested in getting into medical research. They are concerned, you know. "Everything's already been discovered. There's no hope for me." And I'd just like to say, "It's so wide open and so wonderful at the moment with all this biotechnology going on." I can see that in the future everybody will be a lot healthier and happier, because of the things that are happening now, in my lifetime.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Vision

Thank you so much, Dr. Marshall. It's been a real pleasure talking with you.

Barry Marshall Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8