[FACT OR FAKE #74] Was A Chinese Man Really Infected By Tapeworms After Eating Sashimi?
X-ray images purporting to show that a man in China whose body became riddled with hundreds of tapeworms due to his eating contaminated Sashimi went viral on Chinese websites with western media running it further. We take a look at them to determine there authenticity.
By Sadho Ram — 05 Oct 2014, 12:00 PM — Updated about 10 years ago
During the last week of September 2014, images of x-rays were circulated on Chinese-language websites, claiming that they documented a man whose body had become riddled with hundreds of tapeworms after eating contaminated Sashimi
After a Chinese-language website hk.on.cc published an article stating that medical officials had confirmed the x-rays as genuine, several western media outlets — from Daily Mail to The Huffington Post UK — picked up the story and ran it as straight news
Was a man in China really had his body riddled with tapeworms after consuming Sashimi? How much of this is FACT or FAKE?
There's a mixture of correct and incorrect information in this story. Therefore, we are going to break down this week's FACT or FAKE in two parts. Firstly, we will take a look at the origin of the said images, and their authenticity, and later we will determine the claim regarding the Chinese man getting infected with tapeworms after eating Sashimi.
FACT: As per Snopes.com, the x-ray images, matching a 2014 case report published by the British Medical Journal, are real. They feature scans of a 74-year-old man who contracted a rare case of Disseminated Cysticercosis after eating uncooked pork.
Pelvis film revealing numerous cysticerci on the gluteal and iliopsoas muscle regions.
Image via bmj.com
FAKE: No, a Chinese man's body didn't get infected by hundreds of tapeworms after eating Sashimi. Because what the x-ray images show is the aftermath of a parasitic tapeworm infection caused by the eating of raw or under-cooked pork, not Sashimi.
And what's viewable in the x-rays are not the tapeworms themselves, but rather calcified cysts that were the end result of the infection. This news item as presented has some contradictory details (possibly due to translation issues), referencing tapeworms contracted through the consumption of raw fish but then discussing a type of tapeworm found only in pork.
snopes.com