Medical experts are eager to see whether 2021 Ig Nobel Prize winner Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, will cure his intractable hiccups with the digital-rectal-message treatment devised by 2006 Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr. Francis Fesmire.
Bolsonaro’s ailment is reported in many news outlets. The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant says, today: “Brazilian President Bolsonaro hospitalized with persistent hiccups—There is a lot of speculation in Brazil as to why President Jair Bolsonaro has had the hiccups for ten days.”
The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to Dr. Francis M. Fesmire, for his medical case report “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage“; and to Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven, for their subsequent medical case report also titled “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.”
President Bolsonaro is himself an Ig Nobel Prize winner.
The 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for medical education was awarded to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.