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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.
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.
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)
Hyperlinked for the lazy like me: Man Who Walked Following Spider Bite Arrested
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.
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!
Woosh. Really? Spiderman ISN'T real? Why haven't I read about this on slashdot before?
Do you filter out articles posted by kdawson?
Yeah, but how many people on /. believe in Jesus as opposed to Spiderman?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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
The story with a little less bullshit is here: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=519
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!
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.
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.
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.