F
Flimgoblin
Guest
Checked snopes.com again today and they think it's false (kinda):
"Origins: _ The two disparate explanations for these photographs given above are a good indicator of a common Internet phenomenon: Someone makes pictures available on-line, they begin to circulate through e-mail forwards, the original attribution is lost along the way, people begin to make up stories to explain the origins of the now-sourceless photographs, and those fabricated explanations become attached to the pictures as they continue to circulate.
Ask a dozen different medical experts about the photographs shown above, and you might get a dozen different answers -- everything from a skeptical "It's possible" to a flat-out assertion that the pictures have "obviously been faked" (either at the photographic level using a prosthetic device, or at the digital level with image editing software). However, too often people get caught in the trap of assuming that because photographs don't match the explanations accompanying them, the pictures must have been fabricated or manipulated, and one conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the other.
These images may not be photographs of "brain maggots," but that doesn't mean they're not genuine photographs of something else. Fabricated pictures of this nature and quality are quite rare in our experience, and we're guessing that these photographs do indeed come from a medical textbook or a journal article but document a completely different phenomenon than an insect-infested brain. One surgeon, for example, provided us with an alternative explanation:
First, it appears that the cranium (bone) is still intact, and what appears to be brain is granulation tissue over top of the bone. Second, that appearance is more in keeping with a large basal cell cancer of the scalp, which will indeed, if left untreated, grow to this extent, and can invade the bone. I had one patient who did not seek medical attention until her ear fell off!
So, while we're willing to classify this one as "false" in the sense that the images don't match the descriptions provided (i.e., "brain maggots"), we're not quite ready to give up on the possibility that these are indeed real pictures of something. "
"Origins: _ The two disparate explanations for these photographs given above are a good indicator of a common Internet phenomenon: Someone makes pictures available on-line, they begin to circulate through e-mail forwards, the original attribution is lost along the way, people begin to make up stories to explain the origins of the now-sourceless photographs, and those fabricated explanations become attached to the pictures as they continue to circulate.
Ask a dozen different medical experts about the photographs shown above, and you might get a dozen different answers -- everything from a skeptical "It's possible" to a flat-out assertion that the pictures have "obviously been faked" (either at the photographic level using a prosthetic device, or at the digital level with image editing software). However, too often people get caught in the trap of assuming that because photographs don't match the explanations accompanying them, the pictures must have been fabricated or manipulated, and one conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the other.
These images may not be photographs of "brain maggots," but that doesn't mean they're not genuine photographs of something else. Fabricated pictures of this nature and quality are quite rare in our experience, and we're guessing that these photographs do indeed come from a medical textbook or a journal article but document a completely different phenomenon than an insect-infested brain. One surgeon, for example, provided us with an alternative explanation:
First, it appears that the cranium (bone) is still intact, and what appears to be brain is granulation tissue over top of the bone. Second, that appearance is more in keeping with a large basal cell cancer of the scalp, which will indeed, if left untreated, grow to this extent, and can invade the bone. I had one patient who did not seek medical attention until her ear fell off!
So, while we're willing to classify this one as "false" in the sense that the images don't match the descriptions provided (i.e., "brain maggots"), we're not quite ready to give up on the possibility that these are indeed real pictures of something. "
