5 ms·

Tapeworms found in brain of US man who ate undercooked bacon

23 points by YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
This is nightmare fuel.
mannyv 3y ago
To be fair, they're assuming it's from the bacon because it's the only vector he can remember.
- fooqux 3y ago
  Well, probably a bit hard to remember things when you've got brainworms. Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to go wash my hands.
Our_Benefactors 3y ago
I like my bacon well-done. I always end up explaining to the server that this means “crisp enough to not bend”.
MichaelRo 3y ago
How about prosciutto crudo? And the various types of cured meat? Can you get tapeworms / Trichinella or other parasites from it? I certainly ate (and eat) cured meat and apparently it CAN contain parasites.
- wil421 3y ago
  If you’re worried stay away from wild meat, such as wild boar.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Curing and especially smoking is fairly hostile to tapeworms but not guaranteed to eliminate them. Roundworms like trichinella you get through cysts in the meat, which I don't think are reliably destroyed by any normal charcuterie process. The main way of avoiding it is simply skilled and honorable handling of the product at all stages. The US and europe eliminated trichinella by setting farm hygiene requirements, and frankly by killing a lot of contaminated hogs, by throwing out a lot of meat that shows signs of infection. It's one of the reasons charcuterie is so expensive. Even at a high level of technical skill it's not an extremely reliable process, and a lot of product has to be discarded for various reasons. All of that loss needs to be covered by the final price of the good stuff.
dentemple 3y ago
It should be noted that it wasn't just the undercooked bacon. There had to have been poor bathroom hygiene involved as well. >“It can only be speculated, but given our patient’s predilection for undercooked pork and benign exposure history, we favor that his cysticercosis was transmitted via autoinfection after improper handwashing after he had contracted taeniasis himself from his eating habits,” researchers said. Wash yo' hands, people!
- veidr 3y ago
  But couldn't we do better? As a parent of young children, I've been kind of fixating on this, as I try to teach them how to wash their hands. Couldn't we make a cheap, foolproof, patent-free, no-power-required hand-washing device that would eliminate >99% of human error? Like, "fill with water, dispense 3ml soap, reach both hands in and grab the handles at the bottom, do <whatever, some motion to swap the handle things>, remove hands, turn the thing upside down to drain, rinse hands, done" (or something). Or is it just, as I've sometimes suspected (especially since watching captures of that infamous FOX News segment), that the "improper handwashing" is just "totally didn't wash their fucking hands at all"?
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    Yes, "improper hand washing" nearly always means "rarely if ever washes hands." I'm sure we're all perfect about hand washing here on HN, though. Right? ;)
    - tanseydavid 3y ago
      If you are "shaving a yak" or doing "rocket surgery" it is very important to wash your hands first. ;)
    - veidr 3y ago
      Well I definitely wasn't (as in, as a kid I never washed my hands unless a teacher/parent/FBI agent told me "hey, wash your hands!")... But my kids are young, and were like real young when the pandemic started, and (here comes the complexifier!) although I'm American, we live in Japan — where they've just been washing their hands and whatever else since forever. So my own kids (pandemic babies, mostly) not only wash their hands every single time they re-enter the home after having gone outside, but they positively freak out if there are any anomalies that prevent that exercise (like, the hand soap dispenser is out, or there are no hand towels, etc.). But: a.) my youngest is only 5 and I think he lacks the deadly focus to destroy all germs that my older ones have, and b.) me, too — I'd rather just automate it somehow, to make sure I do it effectively. Apple's watch had this feature that used to not only detect that you washed your hands, but also NAG you if it was under 20 seconds. They turned that off by default, because it was annoying as fucking shit. But OTOH, flip that script: "insert your hands... think (some positivistic California bollocks filler)... now clench your fists... AND PUMP THEM IN THE AIR BABY, YOU'RE VIRUS (AND TAPEWORM EGG) FREE!!" That seems way less annoying to me, but I mean I guess that isn't a mainstream opinion or else it would exist?
nostrademons 3y ago
House Season 1 Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHxNGplfic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHxNGplfic
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
My favorite tapeworm-related fact is from Entangled Life [1]: If you cut off a tapeworm's head, it loses its main ganglia [~brain]; but when the head/ganglia grow back, the tapeworm will still have environmental memories (e.g. how to solve a maze it had mastered, pre-decapitation). [1] https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/dp/052551032X https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

This is nightmare fuel.

mannyv 3y ago

To be fair, they're assuming it's from the bacon because it's the only vector he can remember.

fooqux 3y ago
Well, probably a bit hard to remember things when you've got brainworms. Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to go wash my hands.

Our_Benefactors 3y ago

I like my bacon well-done. I always end up explaining to the server that this means “crisp enough to not bend”.

MichaelRo 3y ago

How about prosciutto crudo? And the various types of cured meat? Can you get tapeworms / Trichinella or other parasites from it? I certainly ate (and eat) cured meat and apparently it CAN contain parasites.

wil421 3y ago
If you’re worried stay away from wild meat, such as wild boar.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Curing and especially smoking is fairly hostile to tapeworms but not guaranteed to eliminate them. Roundworms like trichinella you get through cysts in the meat, which I don't think are reliably destroyed by any normal charcuterie process. The main way of avoiding it is simply skilled and honorable handling of the product at all stages. The US and europe eliminated trichinella by setting farm hygiene requirements, and frankly by killing a lot of contaminated hogs, by throwing out a lot of meat that shows signs of infection. It's one of the reasons charcuterie is so expensive. Even at a high level of technical skill it's not an extremely reliable process, and a lot of product has to be discarded for various reasons. All of that loss needs to be covered by the final price of the good stuff.

dentemple 3y ago

It should be noted that it wasn't just the undercooked bacon. There had to have been poor bathroom hygiene involved as well. >“It can only be speculated, but given our patient’s predilection for undercooked pork and benign exposure history, we favor that his cysticercosis was transmitted via autoinfection after improper handwashing after he had contracted taeniasis himself from his eating habits,” researchers said. Wash yo' hands, people!

veidr 3y ago
But couldn't we do better? As a parent of young children, I've been kind of fixating on this, as I try to teach them how to wash their hands. Couldn't we make a cheap, foolproof, patent-free, no-power-required hand-washing device that would eliminate >99% of human error? Like, "fill with water, dispense 3ml soap, reach both hands in and grab the handles at the bottom, do <whatever, some motion to swap the handle things>, remove hands, turn the thing upside down to drain, rinse hands, done" (or something). Or is it just, as I've sometimes suspected (especially since watching captures of that infamous FOX News segment), that the "improper handwashing" is just "totally didn't wash their fucking hands at all"?
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  Yes, "improper hand washing" nearly always means "rarely if ever washes hands." I'm sure we're all perfect about hand washing here on HN, though. Right? ;)
  - tanseydavid 3y ago
    If you are "shaving a yak" or doing "rocket surgery" it is very important to wash your hands first. ;)
  - veidr 3y ago
    Well I definitely wasn't (as in, as a kid I never washed my hands unless a teacher/parent/FBI agent told me "hey, wash your hands!")... But my kids are young, and were like real young when the pandemic started, and (here comes the complexifier!) although I'm American, we live in Japan — where they've just been washing their hands and whatever else since forever. So my own kids (pandemic babies, mostly) not only wash their hands every single time they re-enter the home after having gone outside, but they positively freak out if there are any anomalies that prevent that exercise (like, the hand soap dispenser is out, or there are no hand towels, etc.). But: a.) my youngest is only 5 and I think he lacks the deadly focus to destroy all germs that my older ones have, and b.) me, too — I'd rather just automate it somehow, to make sure I do it effectively. Apple's watch had this feature that used to not only detect that you washed your hands, but also NAG you if it was under 20 seconds. They turned that off by default, because it was annoying as fucking shit. But OTOH, flip that script: "insert your hands... think (some positivistic California bollocks filler)... now clench your fists... AND PUMP THEM IN THE AIR BABY, YOU'RE VIRUS (AND TAPEWORM EGG) FREE!!" That seems way less annoying to me, but I mean I guess that isn't a mainstream opinion or else it would exist?

nostrademons 3y ago

House Season 1 Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHxNGplfic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHxNGplfic

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

My favorite tapeworm-related fact is from Entangled Life [1]: If you cut off a tapeworm's head, it loses its main ganglia [~brain]; but when the head/ganglia grow back, the tapeworm will still have environmental memories (e.g. how to solve a maze it had mastered, pre-decapitation). [1] https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/dp/052551032X https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/...