How far would you go for the greater good ?
Would you willingly ingest a shotglass full of bacteria that would surely give you a terrible case of dysentery, leading to an agonizing, days-long case of diarrhea?
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No? You wouldn’t? Yeah, me neither. Fortunately for the greater good, one man did — and he has the tweets to prove it.
Jake Eberts set the scene.
Last month, Eberts announced his intention to ‘overshare this journey’ with his 11,000 Twitter followers. The full thread is, well, kind of funny, kind of gross, and all kinds of interesting. Unsurprisingly, it’s gone viral.
I have a question: why?
Jake deserves a pat on the back for doing something good for medical research. He also deserves props for acknowledging that money was a factor. How much money would you need to experience terrible dysentery? It’s interesting food for thought.
It’s also about that social media clout.
A final reason for Jake’s odyssey: he’s all about that Twitter attention. Fair enough, Jake.
With a clear head, Jake reported to the University of Maryland for an 11-day vaccine trial in which he would, more likely than not, experience dysentery.
It won’t kill him…probably.
No, seriously, if you’re going to have diarrhea and dehydration for several days, there’s no better place to be than in a hospital setting, surrounded by medical professionals. The diarrhea won’t be fun, but it also won’t be deadly.
The Oregon Trail reference drew him in.
Gen Xers and millennials of a certain age feel true nostalgia for the old computer game Oregon Trail in which you could, yes, die of dysentery.
One of the ads to enroll participants in this program leveraged this effectively.
Day 1: it begins.
The experiment is to challenge participants by exposing them to the shigella pathogen — some participants will have received a vaccine against shigella, and the rest won’t. They’re asked to drink a shotglass of liquid containing shigella, and from there, the nightmare can truly begin.
It’s important research.
Shigella might not be well known, but it actually kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. Unlike similar viruses like rotavirus, there is no approved vaccine to protect against shigella.
Trials like the one Jake participated in help scientists better understand how the virus works.
Down the hatch.
Jake posted this admittedly unflattering selfie showing him chugging the dysentery cocktail. From there, it’s simply a waiting game. Does he hate dysentery or not? When it comes to diarrhea, the body generally tells you when it’s happening.
He got dysentery.
It seems the foul cocktail did its job, because Jake contracted dysentery, which he called “the worst eight hours of my life.” He said he’d never felt more tired in his life, and the side effects of the diarrhea-heavy few days really don’t bear thinking about.
“The entire time, I was like, ‘Wow, this is an awful disease.’ And I just got really emotional, probably also because I was just delirious, about the thought of small children in the developing world dealing with this,” he told Insider .
He did it for medical science.
It’s been about a month now and Jake’s tweeting again, so he’s officially on the mend. In the process, he put some dollars in his pocket, helped inspire others to participate in medical studies and provided valuable, gross data for medical scientists. Well done, Jake! Be sure to check out the full thread .
