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Spider Bite Allows Man To Walk Again
Posted by
samzenpus
on Tue Mar 17, 2009 03:04 PM
from the web-slinger dept.
from the web-slinger dept.
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.
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No radioactivity involved? (Score:4, Funny)
No genetic engineering?
What a let down...
Re:No radioactivity involved? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:No radioactivity involved? (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat after me: there is no secret lab under Sutter Buttes. Certainly not one exactly 322' under Brockman Canyon off Pass Road with henchmen wearing shiny silver suits where several tanks of Sphyrna have recently been delivered. Umm, I mean, these are not the buttes you are looking for...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Location doesn't mean much - a friend of mine's mom got bitten by a likely brown recluse spider in central Minnesota (about 400 miles north of their habitat) and they never caught that spider, either, but the venom was necrotic which is a fairly good identifier. It is suspected that the spider hitchhiked a ride with fruit.
Anyhow, it is very unlikely that this was related due to the nature of that venom - sounds like he went to the hospital and they likely found nerve regrowth or something like that. Nerve
Re:No radioactivity involved? (Score:4, Funny)
but nerve regrowth is rare in the spine because spinal fluids prohibit it.
Guess our intelligent designer needs to go back to the drawing board if (s)he built in a bug like that ;)
There, corrected that for you. Spiders kill bugs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Guess our intelligent designer needs to go back to the drawing board if (s)he built in a design flaw like that ;)
What flaw? You make the mistake of thinking our designer is favourably disposed towards us. Remember this is the designer who brought us Ebola inter alia and chose to make humans specifically susceptible to its effects. I think the evidence suggests that, if She isn't outright indifferent to human suffering, She actually enjoys witnessing it.
Re:No radioactivity involved? (Score:4, Funny)
You know, all you had to do was check the Yellow Pages for the Sutter Buttes/Tarantula Junction exchange, and there right under the "World Domination, Evil Genetic Engineering Consultants" heading was this listing:
"Tarantek: Your one-stop source for mutants, clones, evil world domination schemes, improbability manipulation and 'unapproved' research. Arachnids our specialty. We're also California's largest wholesaler of Chia Pets. We take MasterCard, Discover Card and VISA."
* * * * *
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
—Abraham Lincoln
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, no, no! A proper evil overlord hideout requires liquid hot magma. A dormant volcano simply won't do.
It only appears dormant as the evil genius has been tapping it to geothermically power various projects. Should somebody in spandex or an impeccable tux come in unexpectedly...
Re:No radioactivity involved? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
First person to make... (Score:5, Funny)
a spiderman analogy gets beaten about the head, neck, chest, and shoulders with a rocket-propelled spaghetti launcher.
Re:First person to make... (Score:5, Funny)
Forget dancing! He can't wait to climb walls, sling webs and catch Dr. Oct!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
What? He already is! You missed that part of the article?
that will be tough (Score:2)
All the comments to this article will be spiderman analogies.
Myth busters episode (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:Myth busters episode (Score:4, Funny)
I'm waiting for the Mythbuster's episode.
It was an exploding spider?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Myth busters episode (Score:5, Funny)
They can blow up the corpses after they die of the poison ..
Parent
Screw spiderman... (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Parent
What a misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is, spider venom is a nerv
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Brown Recluse venom isn't neurotoxic, it's necrotic. If his legs rotted and fell off, I'd think it was possibly due to a bite from a brown recluse. Starting to work again? Doesn't sound likely.
I would think it is equally plausible that he fell and it knocked something back into alignment, or he's been showing a long term improvement that wasn't quite to the detection threshold before.
Attributing the improvement to the spider bite is very thin.
Parent
Still an execellant medical solution . . . (Score:3, Funny)
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?
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
You are completely oversimplifying the article to the point where your statement is misleading.
And you are making almost absurd leaps of logic.
They administered THE SAME TESTS this man has taken before with no results and he was able to FEEL something... which he COULDN'T do before.
Yes.
My guess is, spider venom is a nerve toxin... it just so happened to manipulate the biology of these nerves in the same way a swift kick to the TV used to fix bad reception.
Er. No. As you said, he hadn't been able to walk for 20 years. And he'd been in rehab previously with no success. While the article doesn't say, odds are it was a number of years since he'd last been in rehab.
In reality land, nerve damage heals very slowly.
I had a wisdom tooth extracted a couple years ago, and the procedure paralyzed a small strip on lip and chin. My mouth healed up nicely within a few weeks. The paralysis took almost a year. The doctor had warned paralysis was a possibility, that if it occurred it would take a long time to heal, and that there was a good chance it wouldn't heal at all. After six months it went from dead to 'tingling' when touched (sort of like the shooting sparks you get when your foot falls asleep), a few months later and it was healed.
All the spider bite likely did is cause him to be in the hospital, where he was re-tested. If he'd gone in without the spider bite, he would almost certainly have had the same result. In the interval between the last test and the current one, the nerves had healed to the point they would carry signals again.
After decades of no success, you don't go in to try every six months 'just in case'.
The odds the spider bite had anything whatsoever to do with it is minimal.
My guess is, spider venom is a nerve toxin.
Except that the Recluse spider venom isn't particularly neuro-toxic at all. Its primary toxin simply aggregates platelets and white blood cells to clog capillaries, which causes necrotic flesh wounds. Rarely is the venom carried by the blood stream further. The main risk is that the necrotic flesh becomes a breeding ground for 2ndary infections. Its really more like gangrene than anything else.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Except that the Recluse spider venom isn't particularly neuro-toxic at all. Its primary toxin simply aggregates platelets and white blood cells to clog capillaries, which causes necrotic flesh wounds.
well maybe it worked like that BEFORE the spider got zapped with high energy gamma rays, but afterwards things were probably a bit different
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, recluse venom is cytotoxic rather than neurotoxic. In the majority of cases, it causes nothing more than aches and a bit of feaver. In the minority of cases, it will cause a nasty necrotic ulcer local to the bite. Even rarer, the effects are diffuse and systemic causing various organ damage.
It's hard to see where the bite would help, but if it did (that is, not a coincidence), I'd have to guess (and it's a wild guess) that it broke up scar tissue that was blocking healing in the nerves.
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
And we, of course, know everything about biochemistry...
No, but we do know quite a bit.
...and can prove that the chemical pathways involved in his cure are in no way related to the brown recluse spider toxin.
No, but we can apply a little logic and a liberal dose of Occam's Razor and come to a reasonable conclusion. "Magical spider bite cures paralysis" is not that reasonable conclusion.
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:4, Insightful)
The phrase "burden of proof" is something with which you might want to familiarize yourself.
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Funny)
This just in: Spider bite cures laziness!
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Funny)
You think you're so smart, but I haven't RTFA. Therefore I don't know if you're lying or not, therefore in my world, this man MAY be spiderman.
I live in a world where spiderman is possibly real, along with santa and the easter bunny. All you have is stupid reality.
Parent
Missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All atoms move randomly. Under normal circumstances, they move in all different directions. Statistically, if you stand on top of a building for long enough, they will all move the same way, out into the open skies. (And then back to random motion as you plummet towards the ground. Who said QM doesn't have a sense of humour?)
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Funny)
Of course. From the time the article is published until the point in time that you read the article, this man is juxtaposed between the state of BEING Spiderman, and the state of NOT BEING Spiderman.
This is an excellent a thought experiment that illustrates the problems with the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Commenting.
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:4, Funny)
this man is juxtaposed between the state of BEING Spiderman, and the state of NOT BEING Spiderman.
Schrodinger's Bug?
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What a misleading headline- I'LL SAY! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 pi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am going to disagree with you.
If you look at the effects of venom it is actually quite amazing.
Bee Venom: Used for many joint, and allergies.
Snake Venom: Cancer
Venom has very interesting side effects, but the devil is in the details and the dosage. Too much and you die, but just enough and your body has a reaction.
It is an extremely fine line. In the case of this guy who could walk again it would not surprise me that the venom kicked off a reaction that caused the nerves to regenerate.
The human body is an
Re: (Score:2)
A different sort of miracle. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Hyperdilution got into the science section of Nature. In comparison, this article is positively accurate.
And it did not take him long to get arrested eithe (Score:5, Informative)
Nice.
The moral of the story (Score:4, Funny)
The lesson here is clear: women should not drive.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I view that combination at about the same threat level as the redneck with the high powered rifle and the 12 pack of horse piss.
Fixed that for you.
Wrong kind of spider (Score:2)
Sounds like he needed the spider bite that lets you walk AND become invisible.
I've seen this before (Score:2)
It is clearly ADAM at work.
When asked is he strong? (Score:4, Funny)
"Listen bud! He's got radioactive blood!"
Reporting Fail (Score:3, Informative)
The story with a little less bullshit is here: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=519 [theskepticsguide.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but how many people on /. believe in Jesus as opposed to Spiderman?