Australian Nobel Prize Winner Visits Jakarta

Australian Chargé d’Affaires, Louise Hand, said she was delighted that 2005 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, Professor Barry Marshall, would visit Jakarta from 3-5 March to receive a visiting professorship from University Pelita Harapan.

“Professor Marshall’s achievement is proof to all that perseverance is the key to success,” Ms Hand said. “I hope his visit will help to inspire future generations of Indonesians to pursue their interests in medicine and experimental research.”

“I hope the visit will also generate new opportunities for collaboration between Australia and Indonesia in science and medicine, particularly in the areas of biotechnology and research where Australia is fortunate to have world-leading people like Professor Marshall,” she said.

While in Jakarta, Prof Marshall will also deliver public lectures on “The excitement of science and the Nobel Prize” at University Pelita Harapan and the Australian Embassy.

The Nobel Prize has since 1901 been honoring men and women from all over the world for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and in promoting peace.

In 1982, Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren discovered that a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, causes one of the most common diseases, peptic ulcer disease (stomach ulcers).

While at Western Australia’s Fremantle Hospital in 1984, Prof Marshall fulfilled Koch's postulates for H.pylori and gastritis in a well publicised self-administration experiment, in which he drank a culture of H.pylori.

Persevering despite widespread skepticism, Prof Marshall also came up with combinations of drugs that killed the H.pylori bacteria and eliminated ulcers permanently.

The hypothesis that H.pylori was a causative factor of stomach cancer was accepted in 1994 by the World Health Organisation.

This work has now been acknowledged as the most significant discovery in the history of gastroenterology and is compared to the development of the polio vaccine and the eradication of smallpox.

Affecting 50 per cent of the global population, H.pylori is recognised as the most common chronic infection in the world.

“Like a trail of crumbs, the DNA of our Helicobacter pylori can show where we were born and where our ancestors travelled from over the past 60,000 years,” says Marshall.

Ms Hand said Professor Marshall’s visit would also serve to highlight the world-leading quality of researchers that Australia’s schools and universities are able to produce.

“Australians can be extremely proud of Professor Marshall’s achievements,” she said. “Not many people in his field can claim to have helped discover a cure for a disease that affects half the world’s population.”

She said Professor Marshall’s home state of Western Australia had, in particular, developed the largest collaboration of researchers in the southern hemisphere.

“Many have been leaders in research into the molecular basis of disease control, childhood and eye diseases, human genetics, neuromuscular and neurological disorders, ageing and mental health,” Ms Hand said.

Further information:
John Williams (Counsellor, Public Affairs), ph (021) 2550 5290, mob 0812 1053 989