Speaker A
One night, a 17-year-old boy in Australia is on a trip with his football team.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
He spots a little slug and doesn't think too much of it when his friends dare him to eat it.
Speaker A
He says that it won't kill him, then picks it up and swallows it.
Speaker A
In some countries, raw snails are a delicacy, known as escargot.
Speaker A
So, a live slug should be fine to eat, right? How bad could it be?
Speaker A
But, suddenly, he feels tired and has severe pain in his legs.
Speaker A
His body shuts down and he is rushed to the hospital where he goes into a coma.
Speaker A
Doctors give the boy a one in 17 million chance of living.
Speaker A
He wakes up a month later, having lost 100 pounds.
Speaker A
But this was only the beginning of his nightmare.
Speaker A
Let's get into it.
Speaker A
This video is sponsored by Dashlane.
Speaker A
Entering the same data in fields like email and password or credit card numbers.
Speaker A
Gets repetitive.
Speaker A
Being online for both work and fun, software that improves efficiency and allowing control over personal data is super important for us.
Speaker A
Dashlane does both.
Speaker A
It stores all your passwords, personal information, and payments in one secure place only you can access.
Speaker A
And automatically fills forms and password fields on every site with just one click.
Speaker A
Dashlane is powered by patented security technology and machine learning, consistently ranking as the best password manager you can use.
Speaker A
It works on any device or browser, on your phone, computer, or tablet.
Speaker A
Never get locked out of an account or manually enter passwords again.
Speaker A
Dashlane also makes every shopping experience a smooth one-click checkout by storing your payments.
Speaker A
Go to dashlane.com/brew to try Dashlane for free on your first device.
Speaker A
Dashlane is also giving up 10% off if you use our promo code Brew to upgrade to one of their paid plans.
Speaker A
One night in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, a group of young men were on the patio.
Speaker A
Having a red wine appreciation night.
Speaker A
And trying to behave more like adults.
Speaker A
One of them, Sam Ballard, was a strong athlete and promising rugby player.
Speaker A
As the party went on, they spotted a garden slug making its way across the patio.
Speaker A
Sparking a bit of banter between them.
Speaker A
They started talking about a dare to eat the slug, and Sam accepted the challenge.
Speaker A
It was a small, innocent little creature, just like any other common slug.
Speaker A
So, he picked it up and popped it into his mouth.
Speaker A
Sam's life went on for a few days without any issues.
Speaker A
But then he started feeling severe pain in his legs.
Speaker A
He asked his mom, Katie Ballard, whether it could have anything to do with the slug he had eaten.
Speaker A
No one gets sick from that, his mother reassured him.
Speaker A
However, his condition getting worse, Sam went to the doctor.
Speaker A
And was diagnosed with a condition called rat lungworm.
Speaker A
Medical professionals confirmed that he had probably gotten it from eating the slug.
Speaker A
Unfortunately, the condition infected Sam's brain and caused a rare form of meningitis.
Speaker A
And fell into a coma with his worried mother by his side.
Speaker A
Sam was infected with a parasitic roundworm, Angiostrongylus cantonensis.
Speaker A
Commonly called rat lungworm.
Speaker A
The disease can only fully mature inside the lungs of rats, which is where it gets its nickname from.
Speaker A
Infected rats passed the larvae of the parasite in their feces, which can then be eaten up by snails and slugs.
Speaker A
Who, in turn, get infected.
Speaker A
The larvae grow while inside the snails and slugs, but do not fully mature yet.
Speaker A
Their life cycle finishes when rats end up eating infected snails or slugs, and the larvae reach full adulthood inside the rats.
Speaker A
The disease can cause meningitis, which, in general, is an inflammation of the membrane around our brain and spinal cord.
Speaker A
The rare type of meningitis that Sam got from his exposure to the infected slug, called eosinophilic meningoencephalitis.
Speaker A
Can cause permanent brain damage, nerve damage, and death.
Speaker A
When Sam finally woke up from his coma, a full 420 days later, he was unrecognizable.
Speaker A
He had suffered brain damage and was paralyzed, needed tubes to eat, and was only able to move with intense effort.
Speaker A
The strong rugby player, once considered invincible by his mother, now needed expensive around-the-clock medical care.
Speaker A
After staying in a Sydney hospital for three years, Sam was released in a wheelchair.
Speaker A
He still needed 24/7 care, and his friends had to fundraise money to help his family afford it.
Speaker A
Though, they still struggled to get by.
Speaker A
It turns out that, not far away, an eerily similar story happened to another teenager in Australia.
Speaker A
In 2008, Liam Mcguigan, a high school senior from Brisbane, was on a school football trip.
Speaker A
One of his classmates offered him $10 if he ate a slug.
Speaker A
Liam responded, it won't kill me.
Speaker A
Like Sam, he ate the innocent-looking creature and felt just fine.
Speaker A
At first.
Speaker A
It took a little while, but soon, 17-year-old Liam began to feel extremely tired.
Speaker A
And his muscles stopped working.
Speaker A
At the hospital, doctors thought the issue might be his appendix.
Speaker A
They removed it, but within hours, Liam's temperature rocketed as his body shut down.
Speaker A
They removed his clothes and covered him in ice to try and reduce his temperature.
Speaker A
Alarmingly, he fell into a coma.
Speaker A
Doctors at the hospital pumped Liam's body full of steroids.
Speaker A
And told his mother to plan his funeral.
Speaker A
He was given a one in 17 million chance of living.
Speaker A
Then, four weeks after going into a coma, he woke up.
Speaker A
100 pounds lighter than before.
Speaker A
But alive.
Speaker A
Liam had to relearn how to do everything again.
Speaker A
Eating, talking, and walking.
Speaker A
But eventually, he repeated his final year of high school and regained 99% of his old life.
Speaker A
Liam was always thankful for his recovery.
Speaker A
But one day, sobering news came out that let him know how lucky he truly was.
Speaker A
After eight years of living with his condition, Sam Ballard had died, surrounded by 20 of his closest family and friends.
Speaker A
His last words were to his mother, and he said, I love you.
Speaker A
Humans are incidental hosts of this roundworm, which means that the parasite is not really looking to get to you.
Speaker A
But if it happens to find itself in your body, it'll make itself at home in your central nervous system.
Speaker A
While it's not contagious, the infection can spread to people when food containing the larvae stage of the worms is consumed.
Speaker A
Snails and slugs are the most common culprit for carrying these small creatures.
Speaker A
And parts of them can be hidden in raw produce as well.
Speaker A
It's believed that the mucus left behind by snails, slugs, and other gastropods can cause infection.
Speaker A
Though, according to CDC, the science on this is not clear.
Speaker A
For example, if a slug crawls across your lettuce, you didn't wash it properly.
Speaker A
And then eat it raw.
Speaker A
While most of these carriers are small, the giant African land snail.
Speaker A
Which can grow larger than a human hand can be infected.
Speaker A
Yikes.
Speaker A
There have been incidents of the larvae of this parasite being found in some other animals, like centipedes, freshwater shrimp, crabs, and frogs.
Speaker A
It's possible that eating infected creatures raw or undercooked could result in people becoming infected.
Speaker A
But there isn't a lot of clear evidence.
Speaker A
However, fish are not known to spread this parasite.
Speaker A
So, keep eating as much sushi as your heart desires.
Speaker A
And if you're a fan of escargot, a French or d'oeuvre made with snails cooked in garlic and parsley butter.
Speaker A
Cooking kills the parasite, so there's no need to worry.
Speaker A
Well, at least about rat lungworm.
Speaker A
So, please continue to enjoy your delicacy.
Speaker A
However, an attempt to introduce escargot into Brazil did lead to a case of A cantonensis.
Speaker A
In the late 1980s, many Brazilians bought home kits for giant African snails to sell escargot.
Speaker A
Hoping the dish would take off in the country.
Speaker A
It turns out that Brazilians aren't huge fans of escargot, and the business was short-lived.
Speaker A
Unfortunately, the entrepreneurial attempt led to the giant African snails becoming an invasive species in Brazil.
Speaker A
They made themselves at home, leading to cases of rat lungworm and two incidents of meningitis.
Speaker A
Most known cases of infection have been in parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Speaker A
But there have also been reports in the Caribbean, Africa, and Hawaii.
Speaker A
In one incident in Hawaii's Big Island, Kane Tauanuu, a baby less than one year old.
Speaker A
Was diagnosed with A cantonensis.
Speaker A
The 17th infection case in the state that year.
Speaker A
Kane's mother, Santini, said that their home is surrounded by slugs who tend to come out after it rains.
Speaker A
She believes that her baby was crawling around outside and might have accidentally eaten a slug.
Speaker A
Santini had begged the ER doctors over and over to give Kane a blood test.
Speaker A
She could tell this was no ordinary condition.
Speaker A
But Kane had to suffer for nine days before his mother's insistence won out.
Speaker A
She refused to go home again without a blood test.
Speaker A
And her intuition was right.
Speaker A
Because children can't always communicate their symptoms.
Speaker A
The infection presents differently than in adults.
Speaker A
Crying a lot, a bad temper, mood swings, tiredness, and other behavior changes are common.
Speaker A
According to his mother, Kane was developmentally delayed after his recovery.
Speaker A
She says that at 16 months old, he was developed as a one-year-old.
Speaker A
But he is a happy, loving, joyful baby whose parents are extra careful now when it comes to preventing incidents.
Speaker A
Another case involving a young patient, only seven years old, happened in Japan.
Speaker A
Bliss Scott was an American girl in the first grade at an elementary school in Okinawa.
Speaker A
She had touched a giant African land snail and then suffered from bad headaches.
Speaker A
Blood tests were taken to try and find out what was causing her so much pain.
Speaker A
The results brought terrible news.
Speaker A
Bliss was suffering from rat lungworm.
Speaker A
All they could do was hope the disease didn't progress too far.
Speaker A
But the infection reached her brain, and Bliss developed meningoencephalitis.
Speaker A
Tragically, the young girl lost her life to the parasite.
Speaker A
Diagnosing this disease involves analyzing these symptoms as well as travel and exposure to animals like snails and slugs.
Speaker A
Blood tests can be tricky to secure.
Speaker A
But a PCR test can also detect A cantonensis.
Speaker A
Inside the human body, the A cantonensis larvae cannot grow or reproduce.
Speaker A
So the parasite dies over time, even with no treatment.
Speaker A
Those who go on to develop eosinophilic meningoencephalitis don't usually need antiparasitics.
Speaker A
But symptoms can last for weeks or months as the immune system reacts to the dying parasites.
Speaker A
The most common symptom of this meningitis is a headache.
Speaker A
Which occurs in all mild cases.
Speaker A
Other signs include photophobia, light sensitivity, stiffness in the neck, sensitivity to touch, tingling, pain, facial paralysis, muscle fatigue, and vomiting.
Speaker A
Most treatments are to treat symptoms of infection, such as pain medication for headaches.
Speaker A
Or medication to reduce the body's reaction to the parasites.
Speaker A
Like the ice covering Liam when his raging fever struck.
Speaker A
A severe case might be indicated by a high fever and severe headaches, as well as paralysis, pain along areas of skin, vertigo, blindness, and a coma.
Speaker A
Symptoms will usually flare up one to three weeks after being exposed to the parasite.
Speaker A
But the duration depends on the severity of the case.
Speaker A
Normally lasting between two to eight weeks.
Speaker A
People who do get infected with this roundworm actually don't need any treatment in most cases.
Speaker A
Some cases don't have any symptoms while others only display mild symptoms that don't last long.
Speaker A
And if patients progress to a severe case of meningitis like Liam's, treatment will vary on a case-by-case.
Speaker A
While cases of death by snail are rare, it's important to be very safe with what you eat.
Speaker A
And follow a few simple guidelines.
Speaker A
Don't ever eat raw or undercooked critters that can carry this roundworm.
Speaker A
And wash your fruits and veggies carefully, especially leafy vegetables like lettuce.
Speaker A
Remember to wash your hands after possible exposure and before you eat.
Speaker A
And if you're traveling in an area where the parasite is common, avoid eating uncooked vegetables.
Speaker A
Finally, if you see a giant African land snail around, it's best to admire it from afar and not touch it.
Speaker A
Unless you want to become an escargot.
![[Full Episode]Nothing Else Compares（English-dubbed）#cdr… — Transcript](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YYJruShKWz8/maxresdefault.jpg)
