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Spider Bite Allows Man To Walk Again
Manastorm writes "A man who was wheelchair bound due to a motorcycle accident twenty years ago gained the ability to walk again after being bitten by a recluse spider. 'I can't wait to start dancing,' he said as he looks forward to a full recovery after experiencing what some call a 'true miracle.'" I think we all know how this story is going to end. I hope The Sinister Six have been practicing.
No genetic engineering?
What a let down...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
a spiderman analogy gets beaten about the head, neck, chest, and shoulders with a rocket-propelled spaghetti launcher.
Sent from your iPad.
For those of you who are thinking that deadly spider poison is some sort of elixir of mobility I have some bad news. Basically what happened is that he got sent to the hospital and the doctors noticed that his legs were in better shape than he thought, and with some physical therapy he was able to get them working again.
I read the internet for the articles.
but can he walk up walls?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
All the comments to this article will be spiderman analogies.
The article is mis-leading, it sounds as if some biochemical trick of the spider venom mysteriously un-paralyzed him. The actual situation sounds rather more ordinary.
From what I can tell, the spider bite just got him into the hospital, and in contact with the right kind of doctor and rehab that got him walking again. That's a little miracle in itself there, but it's the kind of miracle of circumstance and determination -- not the sort that goes into the science section.
Your friendly neighborhood paraplegic.
I'm waiting for the Mythbuster's episode. First we hobble Adam, Jamie and Grant (who can be the control). Then we inject them all with deadly spider venom. If they survive, we see if the spider venom helps them to walk again. Grant gets no venom. Whether they survive or not, it's entertaining and about as scientific as the rest of their testing.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
http://cbs13.com/watercooler/Paraplegic.Man.Suffers.2.960606.html
Nice.
The lesson here is clear: women should not drive.
What's wrong with Santa? We know St. Nick was real (so we know there are charitable people) and we know wormholes are real (so we know how to travel around the globe in an evening).
The Easter Bunny is a modern corruption of the Eostre hare, which seems to have involved throwing eggs at Bugs in the morning, or something like that.
Spider threads are one of the strongest organic materials known. If we assume the thread could be scaled to the thickness of a typical hemp rope and that the strength scaled with it, it might just about be strong enough to pull building over with, never mind scaling them.
It's not about these superheros not being possible - clearly the science says otherwise. It's about them not having happened yet. Which, since the tales all come from the past, means time travel will have to be invented along with them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sounds like he needed the spider bite that lets you walk AND become invisible.
It is clearly ADAM at work.
Quick, somebody chase him and see if he can crawl up the wall!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Hyperlinked for the lazy like me: Man Who Walked Following Spider Bite Arrested
Now he is going to jail!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/16/national/main4870337.shtml?source=mostpop_story
It's not about these superheros not being possible - clearly the science says otherwise. It's about them not having happened yet. Which, since the tales all come from the past, means time travel will have to be invented along with them.
Woosh. Really? Spiderman ISN'T real? Why haven't I read about this on slashdot before?
I've had this argument many times over with Californians. http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html
There are no populations of brown recluse spiders living in California. In case, this upsets your applecart, I repeat, there are no populations of brown recluse spiders living in California. The common name "brown recluse spider" refers to one species of spider, Loxosceles reclusa, which lives in the central Midwest: Nebraska south to Texas and eastward to southernmost Ohio and north-central Georgia (see map). Only a handful of specimens (less than 10) have ever been collected in California and usually there is some connection between the spider and a recent move or shipment from the Midwest.
Havoc Video
His doctor became agitated and in formed the press
"Listen bud! He's got radioactive blood!"
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
*blink*
You mean, you took my post seriously, even after suggesting Easter was based on throwing eggs at a cartoon character?
I think there is indeed a whoosh here, but I don't think it's anything going over my head.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
a recluse bite would work for erectile dysfunction
Excuse me, but how the fuck did a pop-news story about some abusive ex-motorcyclist who attributed the regaining of nerve function in his lower limbs to a spider bite make it to the main page of Slashdot? I heard that Jesus' face was on a cinnamon bun again recently, and that didn't make it on here...
Turns out he's walking in jail now! :
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/16/national/main4870337.shtml?source=mostpop_story
(Former Paraplegic Man Who Claims Spider Helped Him Walk Arrested On Domestic Violence Charges)
I've developed a news engine that is guaranteed to put Slashdot out of business:
It's called Google News Search.
Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout
Brown Recluse venom isn't neurotoxic, it's necrotic.
. . . for my family's great aunt's mobility problem: She can't move an inch without telling everyone in earshot, who doesn't want to hear, a complete medical history of her bowels and various other organs.
If I can convince her that a bunch of spider bites are the solution to her real and imagined medical problems, that should have that problem sorted.
Maybe AIG should give these spiders out, instead of bonuses?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Aha! You took my post taking your post seriously seriously!?! Wooshmate!
Actually, yeah, I did. To my credit, I thought you meant bugs as in insects, not Bugs Bunny. Capitalization should have given it away. While that doesn't make any more sense, it at least sounds more believable that someone would actually think that.
Woosh. Really? Spiderman ISN'T real? Why haven't I read about this on slashdot before?
Do you filter out articles posted by kdawson?
He had kept a close eye on Christopher Reeves
Christopher REEVE portrayed Superman in 4 motion pictures.
George REEVES played him in B&W serials and television, and was untimely portrayed by Ben Affleck.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
C'mon samzenpus, is it really that difficult to post your crap to idle instead of slashdot's main page? I swear you screw this up at least once a week.
Sturgeon was an optimist.
Most interesting, is there are NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS IN CALIFORNIA!
People will argue that there are, and they know someone whose been bitten, but loxosceles reclusa has only been found a handful of times in California in the last 50 years, all of the cases were isolated, and all were traced to shipments from outside the state. (great page from UC Berkeley prof on this that I can't find now...)
A south american recluse has been spotted in the LA area but is not thought to be established.
There are certainly NONE of these in Manteca.
I can tell you though, that although there are none in San Francisco, people will argue that there are to the point of absurdity, so this is a sort of pet subject of mine about how people are wrong.
However, there are so many Black Widows in the Manteca area that you can find several on a twenty minute walk if you're looking for them. Also, Black widow venom IS a neurotoxin, where recluse venom is not. There are also plenty of scorpions and biting centipedes in the area, but no recluses.
Also, in cases where brown recluse IS confirmed, even in one case of large numbers of them in a family home, there were no bites. They're very rare, and necrosis from a CONFIRMED bite is very rare as well.
Most of what you hear about poisonous spiders, even 'first hand accounts', are simply myths. Real brown recluses and black widows are just not very dangerous to healthy adults, and the brown recluses simply does not exist in most places where people claim to have seen them or claim to have been bitten.
I'm most fascinated by the passion with which people will argue against this, even though it can be confirmed just by checking a few books!
=rmortyh
You are assuming as fact that which is not in the article. There isn't quite enough data in the news article to make a determination yet if there might be any linkage. He had been under doctors care and in rehab before with no hope or any progress. We do not know how extensive his diagnosis was previous to the new hospital stay from the spider bite to determine if he had regained nerve function or not *previous* to the spider bite. Animal toxins have been known to help in some afflictions, for instance some bee stings or wasp stings give arthritis sufferers a little more function and lessen the pain, and they have used snake venom before for other afflictions.
I read it as insects as well.
Anyone who has played Bioshock knows were this is headed. Just replace spider with slug.
I for one welcome our new paralysis curing recluse spider overlords.
A warrior keeps death in the mind at all times from the moment of his first breath to the moment of his last.
The story with a little less bullshit is here: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=519
You kind of contradicted yourself there. You said there are accounts of the bugs being imported. Just because its imported doesnt mean it wasnt there and didnt bite someone.
There are numerous insects that arent native that you can find small colonies of living for a few generations before they die off all over the world.
Polar bears arent native to southern Alaska, but that doesnt mean you wont find someone getting bitten by one in a major city.
I hate misleading articles like this.
Have to say Im pretty sure this guy would have been able to walk as described sans spider bite. In fact, if he had been hospitalized several years before maybe the outcome would have been the same.
And on top of that, I doubt even more that he was bitten by a brown recluse. These are extremely rare if not nonexistant in California (http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html).
And on top of THAT, what looks like a brown recluse spider bite is most often a misdiagnosed staph or other necrotic infection (http://spiders.ucr.edu/necrotic.html).
And despite all this misinformation, probably safe to say people will believe that brown recluse spider bites are like the next stem cell technology.
Let's get this thing to bite a pig!
SPIDER PIG
SPIDER PIG
Does whatever a SPIDER PIG does
Can he swing
From a web
No he cant
He's a pig
LOOK OOOUUUTTT!!!!
He is a SPIDER PIG!!
You're welcome for getting that stuck in your head for the rest of the day...
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Arrested for domestic violence? My god, this man really is spiderman!
... the increased incidence of women placing spiders on their husbands' dicks at night.
...on Friday, Manteca Police arrested Blancarte on charges of contempt of court charge stemming from a domestic violence case, CBS News reported.
I had a friend who was a very nice, very hippie/crystals&dolphins type. She was bitten by a brown recluse that fell on her when she was dusting in her cellar. The bite was basically between her breast and armpit. Since she didn't believe in modern medicine she put a large variety of herbs on it, slept with a crystal next to it, and watched the necrotizing eat away at her for four months, at which point she'd lost part of her breast and much of her pectoral muscle in this handball-sized crater of horribleness. She finally went to a doctor and they did surgery and removed a bunch of tissue. Less than six months later she had two lumps in the area, that were found to be breast cancer, and ended up killing her. I can't state as a fact that the bite and subsequent massive, widespread cellular damage caused it, but it's sure creepy.
Go to the nice doctor when you get a spider bite. They actually do know some useful things, and spider bites are one of them.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
This is a fantastic story, but the article is almost entirely fluff: anyone care to explain /how/ a [brown?] recluse spider bite's neurotoxic venom induces nerve growth? Just curious.
Not a Jew
From: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=519 by Steven Novella
Here is the real story, as best as I can infer from the information I am given, but I have a high degree of confidence in my interpretation. First, it is not plausible that the spider bite itself did anything to regenerate nerves or muscles or improve David Blancarte's neurological function. So what did happen. The story reports:
Ever since, David's been relying on his wheelchair to get around. Then the spider bite. A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months.
It is always important to seperate out variables when considering cause and effect. There are at least three variables we are being presented - Blancarte was biten by a brown recluse (which is poisonous), then he was treated for his bite in the hospital, and then he spent eight months in rehab. Of those three variables, which one is most likely to have resulted in his ability to walk? My bet is on the eight months of rehab.
To understand this we must further separate out variables. Motor ability (like walking) results from two general categories of factors - neurological and functional. Neurological factors include things like how intact the spinal cord and nerves are, and is there any damage to specific parts of the brain. Functional factors include conditioning, training, and motivation. So the question we must always ask when someone makes an improvement in motor ability is: was their improvement neurological, functional, or both.
It was a man who was driving and hit me leaving me with a disability.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I have lived in Missouri for 33 years and the Brown Recluse is a very common spider here. They are inside everybody's home. I see them on a daily basis.
If they were anywhere near as dangerous as they've been made out to be, half the population of Missouri would be dead and the other half would be walking around with rotting holes in their face.
You would basically have to roll over or sit on one with bare skin exposed to risk a bite. A great majority of the actual bites are "dry" meaning no venom.
Internet pictures of bites are extreme rare cases where the person is either highly allergic to these sort of things, like with bees, or they allowed the bite mark to become seriously infected.
Most people who have been bitten won't be able to distinguish it from a mosquito bite.
Now that I've said my peace, I must go spray my house down with spider poison because I'm sure I'll get bit and die now for opening my mouth.
That story is the BS. Writer rambles on without providing scientific/medical evidence it couldn't have happened.
Notice I didn't say the spider did cure him only that the writer of the retort says reporters told a stupid story but he provides no evidence.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A) Areas a creature live in spread/move.
There is no reason a Brown Recluse couldn't survive there, or start to become established.
B) By your own admission, they can be moved around.
C) Rare is different then can't.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe you're thinking of this? It's not hosted at UC Berkeley, but it does sound like what you're talking about. I found a reference to it at Wikipedia.
There's also this page, which is part of a site all about spider myths.
There is a spider that is the most medically significant in the USA. It's not from the Widows, Hobos, or Recluses. May I present to you the ubiquitous Cheiracantium inclusum and its European immigrant cousin Chericanthium mildei more commonly called the yellow sac spider. These critters like to nest in the corners of walls and ceilings indoors. These infest car interiors and pop out at the worst times imaginable. It is sufficiently venomous to merit medical attention, even when one has no allergies to spider invenomations. These are the sort of spiders that go about the walls and ceilings and when one least expects, dragline down right before your face while in the shower, eating a meal, or foul a video blog with an expletive stream worthy of George Carlin.
I use a squirt bottle of isopropanol to stun these bastards from the ceiling corners so I can kill these because these are fast running biting machines. The only benefit is that these control insects and other spiders including black widow and brown recluse.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
I'm one of "those people". A coworker of mine was bitten by one in a hotel in San Diego. He required plastic surgery to patch in the chunk of flesh that rotted away.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Most interesting, is there are NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS IN CALIFORNIA!
Untue. You even say so yourself in your very next sentence:
People will argue that there are, and they know someone whose been bitten, but loxosceles reclusa has only been found a handful of times in California in the last 50 years, all of the cases were isolated, and all were traced to shipments from outside the state.
Do not confuse "has established populations in California" with "is sometimes found in California". The former is false. The latter is established fact. Now, The fact that the brown recluse likes to spin webs in cardboard boxes should send up a giant neon sign that says
THE BROWN RECLUSE ENTERS CALIFORNIA IN MOVING VANS
The fact the few such spiders have been verified is more a testament to the fact that few spider bite victims capture their assailants for analysis than anything else. The reason so many such bites are reported in California is because every jackass and his dog in flyover country wants to move to California after watching the Rose Parade on New Year's Day and seeing that it's 70 degrees and sunny. Every time someone moves from southern Missouri to [Oakland|Los Angeles|ZIP=9[0-5]\d{3}], there's another potential (one to several) brown recluses in California.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Most interesting, is there are NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS IN CALIFORNIA!
That does not make sense! Why would an 8-foot-tall spider want to live in California with a bunch of Ewoks?! If the brown recluse lives in California, you must acquit! The defense rests.
That article was painful to read. Don't people proofread things anymore?
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Nothing to see here. Nerves grow between 1mm per day and 1mm per week depending on conditions. Lower cord damage below L1 is a mix of PNS and CNS nerve tissue, PNS can regrow, but takes a long time and may be impeded by scar tissue. Most SCI has some improvement upto 5 years after injury. Just because the guy can walk don't mean he will be able to walk properly or have reasonable propioception, sensation, or full muscle control. I has been shown that ambulation is possible with 95% of nerves damaged. Trying to walk with improper control, posture and sensation will lead to muscle and bone damage.
I imagine the spider had nothing to do with it, the prayer was what helped as everyone knows the lord is generous and caring and heals the faithful.
So there's thousands of Mexicans crossing the border every month yet you suggest that a tiny spider is somehow unable to? Logic, Sir, logic!
I think it's much more likely that there are recluse spiders in California than it is that their bite heals paralyzed people.
People really like chucking that miracle word around don't they?
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
I live in Arizona and have seen a handful of these spiders. California is only a stones throw away and spiders could care less about political boundaries.
Christopher REEVE portrayed Superman in 3 motion pictures.
FTFY
(We don't talk about the last movie around here. Wait, did I say last movie. I must be mistaken for there WERE ONLY THREE! Move along now.)
"The Brown Recluse Spider (recluse Loxosceles) is spread all over United States"
http://www.brownreclusespider.org/brown-recluse-spider-location.htm
Dumbass. Seriously how can you say "there are NO" and "where brown recluse IS confirmed" and expect me not to respond to that. You contradict yourself and don't even know it.
Yes they are more common out east but it doesn't mean the don't exist in California. It's like me saying there are NO illegal aliens in the midwest. Yes most are in California, but they spread just like the spider and are just as poisonous.
link please
TFA states that the man went to the hospital because of a spider bite were the discovered, that the nerves in the legs had healed nothing more.
To conclude: corellation != causation
http://www.xkcd.com/552/
It was a man who was driving and hit me leaving me with a disability.
Ok.... Women, and some men, should not drive.
what the article didn't tell you that he got bitten after his plane crashed on a magical island...
I see a number of folks discounting the report - Iâ(TM)m not so sure. There may be a connection between the bite and the guyâ(TM)s recovery.
According to a case review I read, âoePain is the most common symptom [of the recluse bite], and it is related either to [I snipped some stuff] or disruption by the toxin of myelin sheaths on nerve fibers.â It goes on to note that some patients report persistent hypoesthesia (abnormally decreased sensitivity) as a result.
As an aside, there's also some doctor that advocates using recluse venom to treat hypoglycemia and patients who deal with pain.
Also, it possible that this guy's improvement could be a side effect of treating the bite â" what drugs were administered (Dapsone is often prescribed and it can have a number of side effects).
Hereâ(TM)s the 1st link: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Brown+recluse+spider+bites+to+the+head:+three+cases+and+a+review-a0124261634
Link 2: http://www.wdsu.com/news/18206496/detail.html
The only connection that the spider had with his recovery was the fact it landed him in the hospital. The "Kindred" (rehabilitation) Hospital in Modesto where he stayed for five months.
Spiderman, sheesh, pure comic book fiction.
Vampires are the clear explanation here.
(Yes, this is offtopic.) I used to be a freelance copyeditor in addition to my main translation and writing activities. While I was good enough not to be put in difficulty by problems in the business (things had become shaky before the economy definitively went south), I've seen many others get less work, and crap copy being put out by companies that previously had everything proofread. The downturn in the quality of news writeups recently has been noticeable to me too -- the last few months I've seen horrid mistakes in Reuters and AP articles; the kind of mistakes I'd rarely, if ever, seen from them before.
One of the known truths in the writing/copyediting industry is that editors and writers are among the first to go when purse strings get tight. Even in a good economy, it's not an easy thing to convince non-writers that quality proofreading has a real, positive effect on image. Many higher-ups just don't seem to understand how much credibility their company loses and how much damage their image takes with bad copy, so they stop hiring proofreaders entirely, and tell their writers to pay more attention... except these types will have let go of expensive (read: good) writers to take on cheaper (worse) ones, "because anyone can write." So you get copy that reads like a middle schooler's report for Social Studies.
What? You must be new here. No one reads the articles.
"I'm not dead yet! I think I'll go for a walk now."
-- from Monty Python's "Search for the Holy Grail"
Truth really is stranger than fiction...
JC here, just caught my first one of spring a few days ago. He was in the laundry pile, found him when I put a shirt on and something was crawling on my back. I agree, not as dangerous as everybody wants to make them out to be. Like the way many people are afraid of snakes.
I have a vascular disease called Poly Arteritis Nodosa (PAN). That's Arteritis as in Artery, not arthritis. In my case the disease attacks my peripheral nerves.
In 2006 my left arm was paralyzed when the disease took out the radial nerve. I was able to recover most use of that arm with about 18 months of intensive hand and physical therapy. Nerves can regrow at a rate of about one half centimeter per day.
Towards the end of 2006 the disease cut one of my vocal chords. I was told there was a small chance that the vocal chord would recover. In March of 2007 I got Bronchitis. I was wracking and coughing up a storm. I went to the hospital and was given a prescription for antibiotics. That same day my vocal chord recovered.
I can't identify exactly why my vocal chord recovered. I theorize that the physical exertion from coughing "woke up" the damaged nerve. It may also be that the antibiotics somehow played a part.
Likely treatments for a spider bite include antibiotics and cortical steroids. My guess is that he was given steroids, which reduced inflammation. Once the inflammation was reduced that allowed the nerve pathways to connect.
There are many people who've been paralyzed in one way or another for decades. I hope this spider story inspires someone to pursue recovery. Step one is to see a neurologist.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
This was an up-beat piece of news to say the least. Things like. This really makes you think about what we are missing, what sort of chemicals Mother Nature has engineered that normally would be used for, defense, or gathering food; things like this could be used to help a potential of millions of people to walk, or regain control of their limbs again.
http://xkcd.com/552/
Most of what you hear about poisonous spiders, even 'first hand accounts', are simply myths.
Most, but not all.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I haven't met many in the field who believe the lay-identified brown recluse bites as necrotic. In fact, going by expertly identified spiders, there are almost no signs of necrosis. This story and your post are very clear about the assumed knowledge regarding the brown recluse.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum