Dozens Of People Hospitalized With âBrain Wormsâ After Eating Common Food Item
Three days ago the University of Miami Hospital received a patient with unusual symptoms. After conducting a series of medical examinations, doctors diagnosed the man with a unique form of âbrain worms,â similar in nature to that of a tapeworm that can be contracted from certain foods. Since that diagnosis, overÂ one hundred more people have been Â hospitalized.Peter Forney, a 44-year-old resident of Miami, beganÂ experiencing strong headaches last Wednesday. Both he and his family first suspected it was just a migraine, but within a few days, Peterâs behavior drastically changed.âHe started acting like an idiot. Peter is a clever man, but all his intelligence was gone. He was speaking with no sense, making bad jokes all the time. I thought he was taking drugs or something, but this constant headache was strange,â says Laura Forney, Peterâs wife. She called an ambulance after her husband peed on the carpet in their living roomÂ while laughing maniacally.âA few hours after Mr Forney arrived to the hospital, we received many moreÂ patients with similar symptoms. All of them became more and more stupid as time went on, as if their brains were being eaten away,â said Dr. Robert Gacy of the Miami General Teaching Hospital. âAfter running a battery of tests we managed to make a diagnosis â the patients have live, tissue-eating worms inside of their brains. It seems the worms feed themselves with gray matter and damage the nervous system, causing violent outbursts, unstable behavior, and decreased intelligence.ââThe biggest problem right now is the risk of epidemic. More and more people are getting sick,â said CDC spokesman Joe Goldsmith. âWe believe theÂ worms are come from common food. Our patients live in different towns all around Florida. They didnât dine in the same places, but clearly there is a link to their lifestyle. It has to be something popular and commonly available. We will find out. We canât let our society get even dumber than it already is.âPanic is spreading among residents of Florida and neighboring states, so much so that they are afraid to eat. DoctorsÂ say that they are able to remove and kill the worms if they are caught early on, but brain damage is not reversible. They warn people to not starve themselves totally, and that it would not be possible for the worms to come from things like candy or soda.âIf youâre going to eat, just eat a lot of unhealthy foods. These types of worms, they couldnât come from jelly beans or Coca-Cola or potato chips or anything, so just enjoy those things until we find out what could be causing this,â said Goldsmith.