Dominic Holden

You’re in Asia and stuff. But BRAIN-EATING AMOEBA are already here!

A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain, where it feeds until you die.

The amoeba [Naegleria fowleri] lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.

In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, 14, was infected until after he died Sept. 17. The teen seemed to have nothing more than a headache.

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water — the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

Lame—the algae expert’s name is Beach. You can’t believe anything he says. That’s like some drug-policy hack’s last name being Holden.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 11:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.