How Bacterium saved the Jalapeño and cost Big Pharma Millions

 If you recall, in the 1980’s it was common knowledge stress, and spicy foods were the cause of our painful ulcers.  The cure was also known, that being - lay off the Mexican food, relax and take a Zantac. 

It turns out our prevailing familiarity with the cause and the cure was based on a story that was simply told over and over again.   This story was told to us for maybe a hundred years, and Big Pharma built up a 8 billion dollar industry based on folklore.

In 1982, a young Australian scientist named Barry Marshall discovered ulcers were not caused by the capsaicin based chili, rather the true cause was the bacterium H. pylori.  Instead of surgery and a Zantac every day for the rest of one life, an ulcer can be cured by naturally replacing the bodies’ microbes.  This changed everything, right?  Wrong.  Common knowledge does not die overnight and typically the higher educated, such as the doctor prescribing the pill, will hold on to their concepts longer than their non-doctor citizens because they are confident, they are accustomed to being right.   The longer we have held an idea, and the more emotional it is, our level of confidence in that idea grows; with this so does the degree of difficulty in changing our thinking.  The evidence is not always the best tool to persuade someone’s mind, leading with evidence to a person who is emotionally committed to a story is equivalent of name calling.  One must lead with emotion, and close with evidence, even, and maybe especially, if the opponent has a Ph.D. in her title.

Marshall was ridiculed, mocked, and held in contempt of the medical community – however, he did not give up, and eventually he persuaded the medical community.  In 2005, 23 years later, he won a Nobel Prize for his research.

The unlikely benefactor of Marshall's work was Chihuahua Mexico and the Jalapeño.   Jalapeño exports the United States tripled overnight.   Moreover, Zantac sales fell by $24 million three years after he took home the Nobel Prize (even with the Noble Prize in hand there was a lag in giving up the medical ulcer religion – A.K.A folklore).