Professor Barry Marshall AC

Recent Speaker

ASMR Medallist 201

June 8, 2011

11.30am - 1.30pm

“Extra Value in Medical Research: Lessons from the Nobel Prize”

Prof Barry Marshall is a highly accomplished medical doctor and researcher who is internationally respected for his amazing vision and persistence, his ground-breaking discoveries, his tireless dedication to his patients and his great desire to make significant contributions to humankind.  He is an extremely active scientific researcher, an entrepreneur, passionate science ambassador and advocate, much-loved mentor to many, and one who enthusiastically embraces new technologies and knowledge.

At the National Press Club Prof Marshall will speak of a future when everybody will be a lot healthier and happier, because of the research and developments that are happening now. He believes that “Medical research is so wide open for new breakthroughs because so many advances in technology in the 21st century.”

Marshall sees the sequencing the human genome and opening up this area of science, as one of the reasons why future generations will be healthier and happier.  “It’s not going to be long before every Australian will be carrying their genome on a smart card. This is going to be an enormous and unprecedented help to their health. It will give people ownership over their own health. It’s the ultimate personalised medicine.”

Marshall believes Australians are currently too paranoid to truly embrace genomics – whether because of a fear of what health insurance companies might do with the information, or a fear of knowing what genetic diseases they might carry in their DNA.


His wishes to help dispel this fear, by becoming the first Australian to make their whole DNA code available for all to see.  “My genome is already in the sequencing machine! It is being sequenced now at a Perth genomics facility, My ENTIRE genetic code will be available on the web and people can
investigate it at will.  I have nothing very special to hide, and I don’t plan to patent my genome.  If my plan is a success, it will encourage others to be involved in genomics in  the future.”


Marshall feels strongly that Australia needs to introduce a similar regulation to the USA, where it is illegal for a person to be discriminated because of their genetic information, meaning that you are not allowed to be asked to divulge your genetic information if you know it, and you cannot be made
to have a test for medical insurance ratings, meaning that higher premiums cannot then be charged by insurance companies for your health care.

Barry J. Marshall, MBBS (born 30 September 1951 in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia) is an Australian physician and Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Western Australia. He is well-known for proving that the bacteria Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most stomach ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine which held that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid.
  
Professor Marshall (Medicine and Pharmacology) completed his undergraduate medical degree at UWA in 1974. He met Robin Warren, a pathologist interested in gastritis, during internal medicine fellowship training at Royal Perth Hospital in 1981. Together, the pair studied the presence of spiral bacteria in association with gastritis. The following year (1982), they performed the initial culture of H. pylori and developed their hypothesis related to the bacterial cause of peptic ulcer and gastric cancer.
  
The H. pylori theory was ridiculed by the establishment scientists and doctors, who did not believe that any bacteria could live in the acidic stomach. To force people to pay attention to this theory, Marshall drank a petri-dish of the bacteria and soon developed gastritis. The bacteria disappeared after two weeks and the illness resolved spontaneously without treatment. In 1984, while at Fremantle Hospital, Professor Marshall fulfilled Koch's postulates for H. pylori and gastritis. Following that, he did research at the University of Virginia, USA, before returning to Australia in 1997. He held a Burnet Fellowship at the University of Western Australia from 1998-2003 http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/home/prospective/heroes/marshall.