Hoax Museum Blog: Health/Medicine

Top 15 Most Bizarre Reasons for Calling in Sick — According to this press release from Career Builder, over one-third of U.S. workers take fake sickies (sick days when they're not really sick). Personally I think that number is too low. The real number should be closer to 90 or 100 percent, because I don't know anyone who hasn't taken a fake sick day at some point. But then again, maybe all my friends and family members are slackers. The same press release also offers the 15 most bizarre reasons that people have offered for taking a sick day:

  • "I was sprayed by a skunk."

  • "I tripped over my dog and was knocked unconscious."

  • "My bus broke down and was held up by robbers."

  • "I was arrested as a result of mistaken identity."

  • "I forgot to come back to work after lunch."

  • "I couldn't find my shoes."

  • "I hurt myself bowling."

  • "I was spit on by a venomous snake."

  • "I totaled my wife's jeep in a collision with a cow."

  • "A hitman was looking for me."

  • "My curlers burned my hair and I had to go to the hairdresser."

  • "I eloped."

  • "My cat unplugged my alarm clock."

  • "I had to be there for my husband's grand jury trial."

  • "I had to ship my grandmother's bones to India." (note: she had passed away 20 years ago)
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004.   Comments (11)
Prozac in the Water? — A week or so ago reports that trace amounts of Prozac had been found in the UK's drinking water got a lot of coverage in the blogosphere. No wonder. The idea that Prozac poppers were excreting the drug into the sewers and thereby contributing to the mass medication of the entire population was creepy, to say the least. But it turns out the reports aren't quite true. It's more a case of something that theoretically could happen, rather than something that actually is happening. In a follow-up report the Guardian notes that the Environment Agency, to which the prozac-in-the-water report was originally attributed, now says that it never studied the issue, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate insists that "There is no research that shows Prozac is in water. There's no analytical data at all." (via Apothecary's Drawer)
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2004.   Comments (6)
The Human Magnet — image Malaysian farmer Tan Kok Thai claims that he's a human magnet. Anything will stick to him including plastic bottles, bananas, biscuits, books, remote controls, knives, tubes of toothpaste, and rocks. The pictures of him showing off of his ability are quite amusing, especially this one of him with a giant boulder stuck to his chest. It looks to me as if he's leaning quite far back, which alone could explain why the objects aren't falling to the ground. Friction could explain the rest of this mysterious phenomenon. But those are the boring explanations. I'm sure Tan Kok Thai is having far more fun by chalking it up to his inner magnetism. (via The Anomalist)
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2004.   Comments (11)
Butt Candles — image Ear Candling is an ancient home remedy in which wax and other impurities are supposedly drawn out of a person's ear canal by sticking a burning hollow candle in their ear. The theory is that the hollow candle creates a vacuum that sucks everything out.
Butt Candling, by extension, is the same procedure, only with the candle placed... well, you can guess where it's placed. As the ButtCandle site (which is safe for work) puts it: "In length and diameter, [the butt candle is] similiar to common candles. However, a hollow channel is cut from bottom to top which causes air to be drawn from the base to the top. In practice, this creates a vacuum at the base which, when inserted in the rectum, gently dislodges intestinal and rectal blockage."
Ear Candling is a real treatment, though don't expect it to work. As QuackWatch says: "Since wax is sticky, the negative pressure needed to pull wax from the canal would have to be so powerful that it would rupture the eardrum in the process."
Butt Candling, by contrast, is just a joke. Though the guy who made the site is selling ButtCandle thongs and mugs on CafeShops. Yeah, that's just what I want to sip my coffee from in the morning: a ButtCandle mug. (Thanks to Jim Terr for the link)
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2004.   Comments (19)
Faking AIDS — Perhaps the worst possible pick-up line has to be 'I've got AIDS!' Especially if you don't actually have AIDS. Yet apparently many young men in Malawi are boasting that they have the disease, even though they're uninfected. They think having AIDS is a sign of sexual prowess. Kind of sad, really. I was especially interested in this story because my sister has been living in Malawi for the past year, helping design an AIDS education program there. I'm planning to visit her there next year, if I can scrape together the money for the outrageously expensive airfare. This year I chose Loch Ness over Malawi (I'll be searching for Nessie in September).
Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004.   Comments (4)
Green Sweat — Here's a strange medical case from China. It seems a bit odd, but it's in the Shenzhen Daily, so I guess it must be true. Why make something like this up? Doctors treated a man whose sweat had turned green. As the article describes: "On the evening of May 28, he noticed green stains on his shirt. At first he thought the stains had probably come from some dye he had accidentally touched. However, when he was helping a friend move furniture Sunday morning, he was shocked to see green sweat streaming down his arms and soaking his shirt." Thankfully the patient's name is Zhou. If it was Bruce Banner the doctors would have had legitimate cause for concern.
Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2004.   Comments (23)
Jesus Christ Online Pharmacy — image Karl Marx did say that religion is the opium of the masses. Well, now it's also a direct supplier of Prozac, Wellbutrin, and Zoloft. Yes, you can get all this and more over at JesusChristRx.com. You can even order up a whole bunch of cheap Viagra from the Son of God himself, if that's your thing. I really don't know what to make of the site. It appears to be a genuine online pharmacy. The Presurfer (whose site I found the link at) notes that it's some kind of knock-off of ChicagoRx.biz. If you click on the About Us link, it even describes itself as Chicago Rx. I suspect JesusChristRx is simply yet another attempt to doll up a business for the Fundamentalist crowd by slapping a Christian label on it... even if the business has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Kind of like the Christian Debt Removers site I stumbled upon last week.
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004.   Comments (2)
Quarantine — What would you be willing to do for a brief shot at fame? Would you embarrass yourself on national TV? Of course, who wouldn't nowadays. But would you lock yourself in a lab and allow yourself to be exposed to all manner of infectious diseases? That sounds a bit dodgy, but this was the premise of the new reality TV show, Quarantine, recently advertised in the Daily Mirror. Remarkably, hundreds of people applied to be on it, and the applications are still rolling in. Thankfully the whole thing was a hoax, an experiment "to discover just how far people will go in their pursuit of fame." (Thanks, 'Ed the doc').
Posted: Tue May 11, 2004.   Comments (1)
The Girl With X-Ray Eyes — imageNatasha Demkina, a young girl living in Saransk, Russia, began to receive a lot of media attention around the middle of last month. It started with an article in Pravda, which hailed her as the 'Girl with X-ray vision'. You see, Natasha possesses the unusual ability to peer through human flesh and spot diseases and injuries that are lurking unseen within people's bodies. Or, at least, this is what Pravda claimed. It didn't take long for more newspapers to catch onto the story. The British Sun has been the most relentless about pursuing it. They've actually flown Natasha to London and are now parading her around like some kind of weird curiosity. Does Natasha really have x-ray eyes? Well, I doubt it. But I'm sure The Sun is going to milk this for all it's worth.
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004.   Comments (710)
Cannabis Window — image This UK website offers you the chance to buy cannabis online. No seeds. No hydroponics. Just cannabis itself, delivered to you by a special courier. Sounds like a stoner's dream. But if you actually try to place an order, it's all revealed to be a joke. (Thanks to Paul Farrington for the link).
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004.   Comments (2)
RYT Hospital — The RYT Hospital-Dwayne Medical Center has been on the forefront of recent medical advances. They've developed a transgenic mouse with the cognitive abilities of a human. They've helped a man give birth. They've even developed nano-robots to deliver gene therapies and repair tissue. Pretty amazing stuff. And they've got a very slick website. Too bad none of it is real. (Thanks to Ross Harvey for the link).
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004.   Comments (24)
Death by Lizards — I'm not sure whether or not this is a hoax, but it's definitely strange. Back in 1910 a young woman died in Akron, Ohio and the local doctor reported that the cause of her death was lizards living in her stomach. Common sense would say that this couldn't have been the case. Lizards couldn't survive for an extended period in the acid of a person's stomach. So did the doctor really believe lizards were the cause of the woman's death, or was he purposefully trying to make an outrageous claim? I don't know.
Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003.   Comments (0)
Gas Be Gone — Dan wonders if these 'Gas Be Gone' flatulence filter seat cushions are real or a joke. I've never actually seen one of these, but I've been aware of them for quite a while, and I think they're real. But the maker of them does appear to acknowledge the humor inherent in a flatulence filter.
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2003.   Comments (1)
Tattoo Medical Alerts — Miami company sells tattoo-like stickers to elderly people, claiming that the stickers will function as high-tech medical alert devices. But it turns out that the stickers weren't high-tech at all. They were just stickers.
Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2003.   Comments (1)
Cough CPR Update — A visitor named Lewy sent in a link to this ABC News story about 'Cough CPR' following up on my post about the subject below. It turns out that a Polish researcher, Dr. Tadeusz Petelenz, published some results just a few weeks ago suggesting that vigorous coughing could help people experiencing cardiac arrest remain conscious long enough to get help. But the jury still seems to be out on the subject. The UK Resuscitation Council says that there's no evidence coughing is going to help. The basic problem is that if you do the cough CPR, you've got to time the coughs exactly right, or you could actually make the heart attack worse. An emergency nurse named Richard Muth has written a good summary of the few instances when coughing actually CAN be helpful for heart problems (they all involve being in a hospital).
Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2003.   Comments (0)
Will coughing help ease a heart attack? — An email has been going around claiming that vigorous coughing can help you survive a heart attack. I received it, and to be honest I thought it sounded pretty believable. I should have known better. According to heart specialists, coughing won't make a heart attack any worse, but it's also not going to make it any better. Just another example of why you shouldn't believe medical advice you get from forwarded emails. The proper thing to do if you think you're having a heart attack is to take some aspirin.
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003.   Comments (0)
Fake Doctor Notes (are not available here) — Need a fake note from a doctor to get a day off from work or school? Visit this doctor.
Update: If you've arrived here via Google, or some other link, realize that I can't actually provide anyone with a fake doctor's note. I simply linked to an article about a guy who was writing fake notes, and because of that my site is now #1 on google when you type 'fake doctor notes'. I have no idea where fake doctor notes can be obtained.
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003.   Comments (887)
Goat-Gland Brinkley — Great article in the New York Press detailing the career of Dr. 'Goat-Gland' Brinkley, the man who made a fortune during the 1920s and '30s by selling a quack cure for male impotence that involved the implantation of goat glands. Incidentally Brinkley became so popular and such a powerful figure in American culture that he ran for governor of Kansas and would have won if the Democrats and Republicans hadn't rigged the election.
Posted: Fri May 30, 2003.   Comments (0)
Medical Imposters — Interesting story in the Toronto Star about a man who was practicing medicine with fake credentials. But he didn't receive a single complaint about his practice. He was only exposed when the Ontario College of Physicians did a thorough check of the credentials of all medical practitioners in the area. It recalls the case of the Great Imposter, Ferdinand Waldo Demara, who once posed as a naval surgeon named Dr. Joseph Cyr and actually performed a lung operation on an injured soldier, even though he had never had a day of surgical training in his life. The operation was a success. He was only discovered to be a fake because someone recognized his picture when it appeared in a naval newsletter.
Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2002.   Comments (1)
CDC Website — The Center for Disease Control has a Health Related Hoaxes and Rumors page. Worth checking out.
Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2002.   Comments (0)
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