Perth’s Nobel Prize-winner Professor Barry Marshall fears his friend Michael Mosley might have succumbed to heatstroke.
“It could explain why he suddenly disappeared,” Prof. Marshall said on Friday whilst checking updates on the search for the much-loved British medical presenter on the Greek island, Symi.
”When I heard that (he was missing), we were all a bit sad about it because a number of my family know Michael.”
“I usually see him at events about once every year or two,” he said.
The scientist said he was worried his friend had got heatstroke, given the reported 36C temperature on Wednesday.
“If you are in a hot, dry environment, climbing up steep tracks in the sun, you can just get overheated. Typically, you see this sometimes in marathon runners, and the last lap around the track at the Olympics, they start staggering around, and you can become delirious.,” he said.
“He could have just fallen over in the heat and been unconscious for 24 hours lying behind a rock or something like that, but they really need to search every square inch of that area where he was last seen.
“I used to do research on (heatstroke) before I did the Helicobacter research.”
Prof. Marshall said he first met Dr Mosley when he visited Perth with a BBC film crew in 1993.
Dr Mosley’s own penchant for self-experimentation was inspired by Prof. Marshall’s own dramatic consumption of live bacteria.
Prof. Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren made a major discovery: Helicobacter pylori is a cause of stomach ulcers.
“He took that (self-experimentation) theme and has been doing it on his medical health shows ever since,” said Prof. Marshall, who said he usually got to watch them on Qantas flights.
Prof. Marshall last saw him when he introduced Dr Mosley on stage at the Science on the Swan medical conference in 2019.
Dr Mosley, who popularised the 5:2 diet, last visited Perth in April last year for his A Life Changing Experience show at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre’s Riverside Theatre.