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July 2, 2022 - QAA
03:00
Trickle Down Episode 9: Upset Tummies (Sample)

For most of the 20th century, the causes of peptic ulcers were a mystery to scientists and doctors. The most popular theory was that it was a disease caused by stress. The mystery was finally unraveled in the 1980s when Australian physician Barry Marshall deliberately infected himself with the H. Pylori bacteria, got sick, and cured himself with an antibiotic treatment. The discovery that bacteria caused ulcers earned Marshall and his research partner a Nobel Prize in 2005. But why did it take so long to discover the true cause and treatment of ulcers? The answer lies in bad evidence collection methods, medical dogma that caused scientists to fully understand the evidence, and pharmaceutical companies that didn’t stand to profit from an antibiotic cure of ulcers. This resulted in many missed opportunities to discover the real cause of ulcers, and countless needlessly suffering patients and even deaths. This is a 10-part series brought to you by the QAA podcast. To get access to all upcoming episodes of Trickle Down as well as a new premium QAA episode every week, go sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com/qanonanonymous Written by Travis View. Theme by Nick Sena (https://nicksenamusic.com). Additional music by Pontus Berghe & Nick Sena. Editing by Corey Klotz. REFERENCES Clendening, Logan (May 7, 1944) Stomach Ulcer Treatment, The Times (Muster, Indiana) Fremont-Smith, Paul (1999) Letter To The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/05/letters/377612/ Graham, David (2014) History of Helicobacter pylori, duodenal ulcer, gastric ulcer and gastric cancer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4017034/ Marshall, Barry (2005) Nobel Lecture https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/marshall/lecture/ Marshall, Barry (2002) Helicobacter Pioneers: Firsthand Accounts from the Scientists who Discovered Helicobacters 1892 - 1982 Palmer, E.D. (1954). Investigation of the gastric mucosa spirochetes of the human. Gastroenterology. White, Peter (2005) Biopsychosocial Medicine: An Integrated Approach to Understanding Illness

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Time Text
And so, on June 12th, 1984, just before midday, Barry Marshall swallowed a broth infected with bacteria.
About a week afterwards, he woke up early and vomited.
And for days afterwards, he continued to feel nauseated, even though he had to go to work.
After 10 days, it was confirmed that he was thoroughly infected with bacteria and gastritis had developed.
Barry Marshall later wrote that it was only after this that he decided to inform his poor wife about what he was doing.
She then demanded that he start taking antibiotics.
On that day, pleased with the heavily infected biopsy results, I first told my wife about the experiment.
With hindsight, I probably chose a bad time.
All mothers have those odd weeks when they cope rather less well than usual, and Adrienne was having one of those.
She had been in a motor car accident two weeks before and had a couple of cracked ribs and whiplash.
So she was struggling a bit to keep up with a two-year-old and three other children.
When she found that my flu-like illness of the past few days was self-inflicted, she was rather upset.
She was quite convinced that the new bug was a very nasty pathogen, and she wasn't interested in either herself or the kids becoming part of the experiment.
I tried to reassure her, claiming that 99.9% of the scientific community believed it was a harmless commensal and that it was still possible that they were correct.
I may have weakened that argument when I had to depart in mint sentence to go and throw up yet again.
After putting up with me vomiting for a few more nights, moaning and groaning all night and having breath like a sewer, Adrienne finally demanded that I immediately commence antibiotics or be evicted from the household to sleep under a bridge.
So it was that 14 days after taking the spiral bacterium, pockets readied with 3 grams of the antibiotic tinnitazole, I underwent further endoscopy.
So wait, by his account, his wife got into a motor car accident two weeks prior, which means that if he was already 10 days in by the time these symptoms showed up, that four days after his wife got into a brutal car accident, this dude was infecting himself.
Fucking king.
Yeah, yeah.
So a couple days after she's recovering from a car accident, while simultaneously taking care of their four children, he's like, you know what?
I'm going to make myself sick on purpose.
Hey there, you've been listening to a sample clip of Trickle Down.
This is a side project that I've been working on.
It's a 10 episode series about misinformation and bad ideas that flow from high authority sources.
I think it's fascinating and I mean it's a way for I guess me to explore the way people who Should know what they're talking about, don't always actually.
Not gonna lie, some of it's kind of a bummer, but if you're anything like me, that's actually more of a reason to dive into the subject matter.
Like with the premium episodes of QAnon Anonymous, all the episodes of Trickle Down are available to people who support us through Patreon.
Still the same five bucks a month, double the extra content, same price that we've been doing since 2018.
We are inflation-proof.
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