Doctors motivated to ease suffering, improve the quality of patients’ lives, and reduce the burden of disease, have been criticized, ridiculed, ostracized and ignored, for expressing new ideas. Hippocrates was criticized for saying diseases had a cause. Dr. Samelweiss was fired from the hospital staff and ostracized, after he proved deaths of infants delivered in the hospital were caused by germs on the doctors’ hands and on dirty sheets. Dr. Rous was ridiculed for his discovery of an infectious cause of cancer, in chickens. In the 1920’s, Dr. Farber described leukemia as liquid cancer, arising from pus in the white blood cells, and was criticized; and Dr. Ewing treated bone sarcoma with bacterial toxins, and his finding was met with indifference. In the 1970’s, Dr. Blount said rheumatoid arthritis was a parasitic infection, and the medical board attempted to take away his medical license. In the 1980’s, Dr. Marshall was criticized for saying ulcers were an infection, as was Dr. Merchant (for ulcers and IBS), and it took nine years and patient demand before Dr. Marshall’s discovery that H-pylori causes ulcers was acknowledged. Ridicule, persecution, and indifference toward new ideas in medicine interferes with and delays innovation and discovery.

Many have proposed infectious causes of chronic diseases. In 1880, the germ theory of disease was accepted. In 1882, Dr. Koch reported his discovery of the bacteria causing tuberculosis. In 1903, Sir William Osler proposed infection was the cause of atherosclerosis; and in 1907, inclusion bodies common in chronic diseases were first described. In 1926, Dr. Plank, suggested heart disease, myocarditis, asthma, bursitis, rheumatism, arthritis, chronic sinusitis, rhinitis, diabetes, nephritis, ulcers, colitis, enterocolitis, prostatitis, boils, and pimples were caused by infection. In the 1940’s, infection was postulated to cause of cancer, and some doctors reported success by treating infection. Scientists have suggested heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Hashimoto’s, cerebral palsy, cirrhosis, sarcoidosis, chronic fatigue, lupus, Wegner’s, Kawasaki, inflammatory bowel, obesity, and eating disorders have an infectious cause. Dr. Andrew Dannenberg, Director of the Cancer Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said the magnitude of the link between cancer and chronic infection is grossly underappreciated. Paul Ewald, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist, proposed infectious disease would be discovered as the cause of many chronic diseases, based on the timeless logic of evolutionary fitness.