Spider Bite Allows Man To Walk Again 221
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.
Re:What a misleading headline (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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
Re:No radioactivity involved? (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. Nerves do regrow (when I was a kid I heard they didn't, but that was proven wrong), but nerve regrowth is rare in the spine because spinal fluids prohibit it.
Re:What a misleading headline- I'LL SAY! (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 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.
Re:What a misleading headline- I'LL SAY! (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe you're thinking of this [ucr.edu]? 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 [wikipedia.org].
Re:No radioactivity involved? (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:What a misleading headline- I'LL SAY! (Score:2, Interesting)