A Culture of One Against Many

In 1984, Dr. Barry Marshall faced a wall of medical orthodoxy. He and his colleague Dr. Robin Warren at Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia had gathered compelling evidence that peptic ulcers were caused not by stress or spicy food, as the medical establishment insisted, but by a spiral-shaped bacterium called Helicobacter pylori. Journal reviewers dismissed their findings. Pharmaceutical companies profiting from antacids had no interest in a simple antibiotic cure.…