Reality Can Trump Fiction...

And nowhere I know of is that more true than in biology. Folks, there's some freakish stuff out there.

Some years ago, early in my blogging days, a fellow blogging nerd (that was the name of her blog: Observations of a Nerd) posted a series called "This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite." She was/is a marine biologist and moved on, but the blog is still in place with all it's glories intact.

Yeah, sure, you can get nightmares watching zombie movies or reading about real serial killers (I can recommend a good book but I know I can't read but a few pages at a time: Hunting Humans: An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers), but, if you REALLY want to never sleep again and curl up with your eyelids held open with toothpicks and a can of Raid in either hand, check out her blog.

Included in her honest-to-God real world of actual nasties are:

• flies that turn ants into zombies before decapitating them (Phorid Flies) - these are actually under consideration for fire ant control.
• Parasitic wasps which not only eat catapillars and maggots from the inside out, but coat their eggs with a virus to disable the host's immune system and castrate it. Before the caterpillar finishes up, he'll spin a cocoon to protect his invaders and even defend them 'til they finally take him down. There's a spider killer that makes the spider build it a nice platform for the cocoon. (she really likes the parasitic wasps)
• Lice (not talking about it or I'll start to itch)
• Human botfly where mosquitoes deliver a human flesh-eating parasite (there are videos)
• Schistosomiasis where bunches of burrowing parasites travel through our blood systems and infest our liver, copulating and generally having a blood bender at our expense.

• The brain-eating amoeba Naegleria Fowleri (shown up in a couple of medical shows but the transmission method and survivability was whacked) - this is ameobic meningitis and it takes no prisoners because it tells your brain it belongs there and your brain goes, "never mind then" until it's too late. I wanted to infect a character with this and let him survive, but my husband absolutely put his foot down. No amoebas were going to eat his favorite character's brain. They are bad to the bone, though.
• The loa loa worm, aka the African eye worm. Do I have to explain?
• Cookie cutter sharks that literally take a divot of flesh from the unsuspecting
• Hairworm - using zombie control again, this time on grasshoppers its eaten from the inside
• The Mountain Acon Blue Butterfly which convinces red ants to drop everything and feed it like a queen using her forms of chemical and aural communication.
• Pearlfish that literally make their homes in the anuses of sea cucumbers and starfish (and, some of them chow down on their hosts while they're there. No need to go out for dinner. We'll eat in.)
• A parasite that "kills" a fish's tongue and then takes it's place, acting like a normal tongue and keeping the fish alive for further feeding.

• The human (and other flesh) eating screwworm, basically maggots that favor living flesh, or at least until they're through with it. (Yuck)
• The toothpick fish which is attracted to ammonia products and attach itself via spines to dig it's way in until it reaches a blood vessel. That's some pretty painful digging whether your its intended prey (fish) or a human. 

Really, you could read for hours. I'm having to stop myself .

Now, I've mentioned them before, but, here's the good part, trying to find them again allowed me to stumble over another collection of biological oddities: Absurd Creature of the Week on Wired. Jackpot! Not just parasites (though those, too) but all kinds of odd critters. You don't even have to be a writer to have a good time.

Actually, both the blog and the column on Wired are very entertaining reading in addition to being educational. And, on that note, I'll leave you with this video.

You're welcome.

Read more...

Science Fiction Freakiness - Hold the Fiction

OK, every once in a while I write a post basically telling you something really cool I've seen on another blog. Well, this is another one. Why?

Well, it's cool. A blog I've been enjoying called "Observations of a Nerd" - which is kind of like Rocket Science in principle except all about biology and socialogy and a few other types of science that can make those of us in the physical sciences pretty uneasy (unless you're as opinionated as I am) - has a weekly feature on "This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite." Now, some of you know I write science fiction. She ain't lying when she says these are science fiction-worthy and I'm starting to take notes. Some, like this week's, aren't immediately threatening but the notion, where it could go from there, is definitely disturbing. It's a fungus that does some funky funky stuff to mustard plants. Seriously, you should check it out.

Last week was horrifying, a loa loa worm. Believe me, you don't want to know. It'll scare the pants right off you and then some. Don't go! Too late. I bet you just navigated back from her page unable to control yourself, and lost a few years off your life in the process.

Others she's done include
Lice (with their mini-chromosomes)
Cookie Cutter Shark (just freaky)
Hairworm (insect mind control)
Screw Worm (aka "Man-eater")
Parasitic Wasps
Candiru (murderous little catfish)
Mountain Acon Blue Butterfly (evil evil butterfly)
Cymothoa exigua (snapper nightmare)
Parasitic barnacles (making females of crabs, whether they wanted to or not)
Emerald Cockroach Wasp (pretty but *shudder*)
Dricrocoelium dendriticum (more mind control)

And now I have a handy dandy list to learn more about parasites for science fiction. And so do you.

She's even got a post on why parasites are evolution's superstars. *Shudder* Maybe, but I prefer my parasites at a distance, or, scaring the bejeebus out of my characters trapped on an alien planet populated by nasties nearly as scary as they ones we have on THIS planet.

Read more...

More on Health

I try to catch up, but it just isn't working. Ended up working until late at night for WORK so I'm just now starting my blog. Which means I doubt I'll get it all up before the night's out. Whew!

I mentioned some speculation about unforeseen consequences for our pill-poppin' tendencies in my last blog. But I kind of would like to continue that line of thinking with regards to the whole health care industry. Now, let me preface my opinions with an assurance that I know many health care professionals are dedicated and devoted. I don't intend to imply that problems I've seen are a condemnation of the whole medical profession.

However, there are some serious problems out there, whether they result from insurance issues or financial pressures or laziness - a tendency that exists in most professionals to find an "obvious" answer and then leave there without looking deeper. In certain professions, like space safety, that kind of laziness can get people killed (or at least spacecraft lost). This is also true for the medical profession.

Too often, in my opinion, an obvious answer is addressed without digging for the real cause. Treat a symptom without realizing what the real problem is.

Case in point, my mother-in-law, for instance, has been battling mini-heart attacks since she was thirty-seven (little less than a decade, by the way - yes, my husband's younger). She's gone into the emergency room multiple times. She's fought multiple bladder and other abdominal infections and pains that no one's taken seriously. So, two weeks ago, she went into the emergency room and someone suspected a gall bladder problem and gave her a simple blood test. There it was. Her gall bladder was 19 cm in diameter (instead of the normal 3) and filled to (literally!) bursting with 37 gall stones. And, yeah, the doctor thinks it's been a problem for ten years but no one ever checked.

Now, this is one person, anecdotal evidence at it's best, but can you honestly say you don't know a story like this? Someone calling in to the doctor with their four month baby's coughing but never able to get an appointment, but getting prescription medicine over the phone, only to force the issue and find out the baby now has pneumonia because she'd been given the wrong medicine? When she told me I'd made my baby sick because I'd given her the wrong medicine (that she'd prescribed), I vowed never to go back to that doctor. And I didn't.

A relative's son had surgery for an in-grown toenail. He ended up with a fever that the doctor repeated dismissed over the phone. Fortunately for mymy relative's son, my relative took her son to the emergency room when his temperature topped 103. But not, unfortunately, before he ended up with an infection in his bones that made for three very scary days in the hospital and took six months of IV antibiotics to overcome.

My poor mother-in-law has had a number of doctors that have not ever seemed to delve to her real problems. But I learned something listening to her struggles. I believe most doctors do their best, but, even under the best circumstances, they aren't going to understand your body as well as you do. They're going to know how many people react to certain medicines, but they don't know how you have responded or will respond. When it comes to your health and the health of your family, you had better be an informed consumer and know what's happening and what isn't going like it should.

People don't come with warranties and you can't just toss 'em if they break down. And, for all the uncertainties and unknowns that come with chemistry and physics, it's just a drop in the bucket to what we don't know about biology.

Just sayin'.

Read more...