Brain Maggots / Sushi Worms
Updated: 04/07/03
While medical experts agree that the accompanying stories are fiction, debate over the authenticity of the images themselves is ongoing. When I showed them to pathologist Ed Friedlander, he concluded they had been faked, largely because most of the anatomical landmarks one would expect to find in a dissected brain are nowhere to be seen. Another expert speculated that the photos could be real, but, if so, depict a very serious case of scalp cancer, not a "brain infection." In any case, no one was able to account for their origin.
In a new development, the debunkers at Snopes.com have determined, based on information from an unnamed but presumably reliable source, that the images are indeed real and document the case of 70-year-old man suffering from "an unusual form of cancer which had eaten away at the upper portion of his skull and scalp." Contacted for a follow-up opinion, Dr. Friedlander agreed the explanation is plausible, but in his judgment the photos may still have been retouched. "I cannot account for the apparent maggots and apparent eggs," he wrote.
Surprisingly, the Snopes.com source also lends partial credence to one of the email texts — the "ingrown hair" story, which claims the patient was ultimately treated at "Stanford ER." The source confirmed that the photographs were indeed taken at Stanford University Hospital, where the subject was brought by ambulance after a minor traffic accident (note that he did not "walk in," as the email alleges, complaining of feeling "a little wobbly on his feet"). Also confirmed, elevating the story's plausibility another slight notch, was the claim that the patient never sought treatment for the disease even though it had progressed to the horrific point we see in the photos, "because the condition was not causing him pain."
None of the foregoing, obviously, had anything to do with an ingrown hair, but it would appear that whoever made up that fanciful version of events was at least dimly aware of the actual circumstances.
As to Mr. Fujiwara, the sushi fanatic who supposedly contracted brain worms by eating raw fish, that variation of the tale is simply preposterous. While the medical literature supports the claim that certain species of tapeworm and roundworm can infect the human digestive tract when consumed in raw or undercooked fish, I could find no indication that these particular parasites (in contrast to the pork tapeworm, which is capable of causing a wider, more serious array of symptoms) can migrate to other human organs, such as the brain. In documented cases where pork tapeworm larvae have been found in the brain, they were embedded, cyst-like, in the neural tissue; they don't crawl around freely, nor are they capable of boring through the patient's skull and emerging through the scalp.
To set the record straight, maggots can infest the human brain, and so can certain types of tapeworm larvae. But these conditions are pretty rare and, in spite of what you may have heard through the email grapevine, they don't result from ignoring ingrown hairs or binging on sushi.
now the gross photos....
I don't believe it.
Linear Mode
