--- title: "Brave Volunteer Drinks “Dysentery Smoothie” to Give Himself “Life-Threatening Diarrhea”" description: "A man drank shigella bacteria, which causes excruciating dysentary and tweeted the week-long process in stomach-churning detail." date: "2022-04-30" modified: "2022-04-30" authors: - name: "Lonnie Lee Hood" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/ahood" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/volunteer-drinks-dysentery-smoothie-diarrhea-vaccine-research" categories: - "Health & Medicine" tags: - "dysentery" - "gut health" - "healthcare" - "wellness" --- # Brave Volunteer Drinks “Dysentery Smoothie” to Give Himself “Life-Threatening Diarrhea” ![A man drank shigella bacteria, which causes excruciating dysentary and tweeted the week-long process in stomach-churning detail.]() *\Image: Jake Eberts / Twitter \* If all goes well, you won't have died of dysentery — unlike in the dysentery-loving [Oregon Trail video game]() — because a brave volunteer took one for the team and tested out a vaccine for the bacteria that kills hundreds of thousands each year. Jake Eberts drank about a shot glass' worth of shigella bacteria, which causes the excruciating illness, earlier in April. He spent more than a week at an inpatient facility where his health could be intensely monitored. Eberts was part of a group of 16 volunteers and [tweeted the entire experience in stomach-churning detail](). Eberts told *Business Insider* the illness kicked off "the worst eight hours of my life," which means he may well have been in the control group who received a placebo vaccine and had no immunity that could offer protection against the shigella. "I truly felt like I could not move," [Eberts told *BI* the day before being dismissed from the trial](). "Every movement in the bathroom, to get up to wash my hands or to grab a paper towel, I would lie back down on the ground and just sit there for five minutes." But hey, [at least he got paid more than $7,000]()! "I don't want to make myself out to be Mother Teresa here — would not have done this for free. It's a big ask to ask someone to get dysentery," Eberts told the outlet. "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." *BI* also reported that researchers are hoping the vaccine is at least 70 percent effective, and that it may move to larger human trials. https://twitter.com/wokeglobaltimes/status/1510772526120583174?s=20&t=yNkK_dNN3j-m2dQCfcd8Ag Solving global disease is a big job to pull off. The team may finds themselves in need of more volunteers. If so, [the Oregon Trail-themed ad that sold Eberts on the project](), pictured above, should hopefully resonate with enough people willing to put up with the worst diarrhea they'll ever have. **More on disease prevention:** [*Alzhemier's May Be Caused By Cell Phones, Scientists Say*]()