Professor Luke O'Neill
speaker
1,535 appearances
7 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 3 Sep
Professor Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.
Appearances
And I'm going to describe some of that as well.
Now, we've known for a long time that certain bacteria in your gut do increase the risk of cancer.
So, for example, Helicobacter.
That's the best example we have.
Helicobacter was discovered, oh, it must be 30 years ago now, as a huge risk factor for ulcers in your stomach.
If that bacteria grows and grows and grows in your gut.
Now, remember, your gut is full of bacteria.
It's a bit of the Amazon rainforest down there in terms of species, though.
There are many, many different species there.
making it very difficult.
But this one, Barry Marshall famously found that Helicobacter in the gut was a huge risk factor for ulcers.
Guess what?
Barry wins the Nobel Prize.
If we kill those bacteria and antibiotics, ulcers go away.
And this was a massive medical advance because before Barry discovered this, ulcers were thought to be caused by stress,
by smoking.
The typical ulcer sufferer was a middle-aged man, not making his targets as a salesperson or whatever, drinking too many martinis and smoking too much.
And hey, he gets an ulcer.
But it turns out it's the bacteria that causes the ulcer.
Now, the second thing is that it was also known that having Helicobacter increases the risk of gastric cancer.
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