TV Personality Purposely Experiences Tapeworms for Himself
- 10 years ago
In his latest venture, BBC’s Dr. Michael Mosley is looking to see how parasites, specifically tapeworms, affect his body in hopes of giving doctors some insight in catching infections early.
BBC journalist Dr. Michael Mosley prefers to learn through personal experience by making himself a test subject for magic mushrooms, fasting diets, and truth serums, among others. In his latest venture, he’s looking to see how parasites, specifically tapeworms, affect his body in hopes of giving doctors some insight in catching infections early.
The BBC4 documentary called “Infested! Living with Parasites” chronicles Mosley’s experiences after ingesting three beef tapeworm eggs from infected cattle. Later he swallows a camera that sends pictures to his iPad, and sees three worms about 3 feet long attached to his gut.
As long as 100 feet, some tapeworms can be dangerous and get into the eyes or brain like the pork tapeworm. Mosley warns not to try similar experiments and specifies that the tapeworms he ingested, and then killed off, were of the more harmless variety.
That could explain why Mosely reported no good or bad effects, and only a weight gain of 2 pounds – discrediting the Victorian myth about tapeworms and weight loss.
Mosley also had a leech suck eight times its weight in blood while attached to his arm, and failed at infecting himself with lice, also on his arm. In the end, Mosley said, “parasites on the whole, are not crazy about me.”
BBC journalist Dr. Michael Mosley prefers to learn through personal experience by making himself a test subject for magic mushrooms, fasting diets, and truth serums, among others. In his latest venture, he’s looking to see how parasites, specifically tapeworms, affect his body in hopes of giving doctors some insight in catching infections early.
The BBC4 documentary called “Infested! Living with Parasites” chronicles Mosley’s experiences after ingesting three beef tapeworm eggs from infected cattle. Later he swallows a camera that sends pictures to his iPad, and sees three worms about 3 feet long attached to his gut.
As long as 100 feet, some tapeworms can be dangerous and get into the eyes or brain like the pork tapeworm. Mosley warns not to try similar experiments and specifies that the tapeworms he ingested, and then killed off, were of the more harmless variety.
That could explain why Mosely reported no good or bad effects, and only a weight gain of 2 pounds – discrediting the Victorian myth about tapeworms and weight loss.
Mosley also had a leech suck eight times its weight in blood while attached to his arm, and failed at infecting himself with lice, also on his arm. In the end, Mosley said, “parasites on the whole, are not crazy about me.”