Hoax of the Day: Boy Breeds Beetles in his Groin

[Peetster]

Note: We see a lot of fantastic stuff cross our desks. Most of it is nonsense, and that is usually the point of these hoax threads. Occasionally, however, the most bizzare is actually true. Occasionally I'll include verifications such as this.

Claim: An Indian boy experienced a rare condition in which beetles bred in his body and emerged from his groin as full-grown flies.

Status: True.

Example: [The Calcutta Telegraph, 2003]


Live flies are emerging out of a perforation in the lower part of the body of a 13-year-old boy in Bengal in a bizarre — but not unknown — phenomenon.

Admitted in Burdwan Medical College Hospital since last Saturday, Chandan Goswami stunned doctors as the flies began to come out of a part of his crotch to take wing. Some of the flies were caught by the boy’s parents.

"This is a condition called myiasis in which a human or animal body, dead or alive, is invaded by the larvae of particular types of flies," said an excited Snehansu Pan, the surgeon taking care of Chandan.


Origins: Urban
legendry is rife with horror tales of insects entering, living in, breeding in, and emerging from the bodies of living human beings. Although nearly all such stories are apocryphal cautionary tales, in mid-June 2003 news accounts began to emerge from India chronicling the real plight Rove beetle of a Chandan Goswami, a 13-year-old Bengali boy suffering from myiasis, a rare condition described as one in which:

The larvae of a type of fly invade a human or animal body, dead or alive. The deposited eggs then enter the body through pores, the mucous membrane or even the mouth. The hatched larvae then emerge out the host's skin and pupate.

In Chandan's case, whole flies (later identified as a species of the rove beetle) complete with wings were emerging from his groin and flying off.

Most readers became aware of this story through articles from the Indo-Asian News Service and the Calcutta Telegraph which were redistributed through Yahoo!'s on-line news service. Usually odd news reports emanating from a place such as India are suspect and difficult to verify, but in this case the Calcutta Telegraph provided day-by-day news coverage with a wealth of detailed information for several days running, enough to establish that at least the basics of this saga were true. The last article, dated 25 June, reported that Chandan's parents, frustrated with his doctors' inabilities to adequately diagnose or treat his malady, had gotten him discharged from Burdwan Medical College Hospital so that he could be admitted to the urology department at SSKM Hospital:

Parents of Chandan Goswami, the boy suffering from myiasis, today got him discharged from the medical college hospital here and set off for Calcutta to admit him to the urology department of SSKM hospital.

Faced with pressure from Chandan's family, who alleged that the doctors could not do anything even after keeping the 13-year-old under observation and treatment for 18 days, the seven-member medical board met this morning and released him.

Since Chandan’s admission on June 7, 13 insects, resembling flies but still unidentified, have flown out of the perforation in the boy’s crotch on four occasions. The doctors performed several clinical examinations, including a cystoscopy, which yielded no result.

Tamal Ghosh, Chandan's uncle accompanying the family to Calcutta, said the hospital had handed over only the discharge certificate. They have not got the papers relating to the treatment he received and the tests done on him.

It seems Chandan left the hospital with bitter memories. "Last night one of the doctors told me my son had gone mad. He asked us to take him away and chastised me for wasting their time," said Alpana, Chandan's mother. Ghosh said the doctors were not taking proper care of the boy, who lay writhing in pain last night.

Chandan suffered an internal injury during the cystoscopy and has been passing blood with his urine. But doctors said such injuries were not uncommon during the procedure.

We haven't turned up any follow-up articles on Chandan's condition since then, although we did find that — in a bizarre coincidence — the day after the last article on Chandan, the Calcutta Telegraph published another account of a boy suffering from a similar condition in which dung beetles were emerging from his rectum:

Live "dung" beetles today emerged out of a perforation in the lower part of the body of a two-and-half-year-old boy in a rare condition known to be occurring in tropical countries.

Experts termed the disease a rare case of "scarabiasis or canthariasis", prevalent among children between two and five years.

Sources said the boy, a resident of Hakimpara, was being treated by paediatrician S.B. Mantry for lack of appetite, abdominal cramps and weakness.

Last week, the boy's parents had showed Mantry a black insect which, according to them, had come out while he was defecating. They told the doctor such insects had buzzed out earlier, only this time they caught it before it could take wings.

Mantry was reportedly taken aback when he was shown the beetle-like insect, which had bright yellow stripes on its black body. The doctor advised the boy's parents to have the specimen examined by Supada Mallick, a local pathologist.

A surprised Mallick referred the case to another pathologist, S.K. Roy, last Saturday. Roy described the disease as scarabiasis, better known as the "beetle disease." He confirmed that the insect that had come out of the child’s body was a beetle.

"Medical parasitology terms this disease as scarabiasis or canthariasis, where beetles infest the digestive tract," Roy said.


source: snopes.com

[Pennington]

Man, I heard about the fly boy, but the beatle thing is news to me. How on earth would you be able to get help for flys coming out of your urethra?

"Hello. 911"
"Yes, um, I seem to have a problem"
"What kind of problem sir"
"Well it's kind of embarising"
"Sir, we're all adults here, what the problem"
"There are flys flying out of my penis, what should I do"
"Is this a joke?"
"No, I'm totally serious!"
"This is some sick joke, I know it. 911 is here for emergancies and to save lives, not for sickos like you to call to get you knocks off"
"but..."
"I'm reporting you to the police."

[nash]

Were they coming out of the urethra? That's crazy. Is that what "perforation" meant? I was hoping that someone cut a slit or something somewhere else. But the urethra?? That's got to be painful. Poor kid.

It sucks to be the guy with the beetles too. I'd be sooo scared, man.

[gar1976]

I thought that story was strange enough to be true, too! Drat.

[cheerios]

gar, hun... if you read the first post, it says it is true.

[bobbles]

I swear as i read this i felt a fly walking around...