Fred, the 20 plus foot intestinal tapeworm

Jack Palance was a hoot, even as he was a great entertainer. I loved the way he would emote with breathlessness as if he had just finished running the 400 meter.

One funny Believe It Or Not segment concerned an adventurer Englishman way back in the 1890s. This English adventurer evinced a medical interest hobby as well. He wanted to prove a theory that retaining an intestinal parasitical tapeworm would protect one against intestine-related diseases. He proceeded to swallow a tapeworm larva. Jack Palance relates how the man traveled about India and even drank his full at the holy but polluted Ganges River. Dead animals and cremated people's ashes are scattered into the waters. People are doing all sorts of things in the Holy Ganges so I can't be criticised for denigrating Hinduism. It's all there for everyone to see. Nonetheless, Palance ends the story that the English traveler reportedly never fell ill once during his sojourn throughout India and wherever else he travled on the Asian continent. Upon returning to England, the man drank a medicinal anti-parasite potion. Effective as it should be, he shortly thereafter excreted the detached tapeworm. He was careful however, to collect the tapeworm in a bucket. When measured, Palance claimed that the parasite's length was well over 20 feet. The Englishman had nicknamed his tapeworm parasite, 'Fred'. Well, that's a LOL, isn't it?

But wait, read the 2001 book, "Parasite Rex". I'm astonished. The study of parasites infesting humans has advanced greatly. A current theory is that some parasites can actually benefit the human host while doing little to neglible damage. In fact, the human body might require some minimal parastical infestation to prevent allergies and auto-immune diseases. The parasite it appears, does something to tame the human immune system to prevent immune attacks upon itself. Without this immune system regulation, the body overreacts to any invasion of external stimuli thus leading to overreactions and resulting allergies or auto-immune dysfunction. That spoken, the vast majority of other parasite infections are definitely harmful. The most damaging are those parasites that are evolved to live in a specific host such as a rat, a frog, or a snail, but mistakenly end up in a human body. Watch Nature Channel's "Monsters Inside Me", on YouTube.