A New Way to Catch Hepatitis

July 25, 2002 6:27 AM

A New Way to Catch Hepatitis
"Israeli doctors have discovered a gruesome new way to catch hepatitis and possibly other blood-borne diseases - from the flying bone fragments of suicide bombers." (empahasis added)
posted by Irontom (9 comments total)

I didn't post this as a I/PFilter troll. It's just a weird thing that I had never even contemplated before.
posted by Irontom at 6:29 AM on July 25, 2002

Interestingly, this is something that is addressed in the medical literature. Not specifically as suicide bombers, of course, but in any major multivictim trauma there is risk of displaced parts. I remember this even being addressed several years ago when I took ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support) down at Tulane.
posted by shagoth at 6:37 AM on July 25, 2002

Yeah, but wait 'till some Jewish virgin gets pregnant from shapnel that goes through some guy's scrotum and into her ovaries. That kid'll probably really shake things up in the Middle East.
posted by straight at 6:55 AM on July 25, 2002

Not to get overly offbeat about this, but is this what is meant by getting a boner?
posted by Postroad at 7:16 AM on July 25, 2002

Those must be pretty crappy bombs they're using if people are standing close enough to get hit by bone fragments and aren't getting killed. Not that I know anything about explosions, but that's what first came to mind.

On another note, people standing right next to the bomber get exploded. They'd probably be willing to take Hep C(?) over that any day.
posted by ODiV at 7:28 AM on July 25, 2002

There was no mention of an actual Hep infection being transmitted. As ODiV points out there are far more likely and serious concerns with Suicide bombing. Like Dying.
posted by srboisvert at 8:13 AM on July 25, 2002

Not to get overly offbeat about this, but is this what is meant by getting a boner?
Yes, that is what they mean when they say that.
posted by thirteen at 8:46 AM on July 25, 2002

pretty lame, postroad.
posted by interrobang at 9:52 AM on July 25, 2002

In Canada getting infected from accident blood like this sucks alot!

My father is a paramedic; one accident he went to involved a 20 year-old hitting a support column with his sports car going over 100 km, needless to say the car was pretty messy. In the course of checking if he was still alive my dad got cut on a piece of the car, which had blood on it.

From the quick look of the guy it was obvious that he was an iv drug user, probably the reason for the crash, but according to the laws in Canada you can NOT test the blood of a dead person unless the victims family specifically allows you to, even in cases like this.

And in this case the victims family did not want to know.
This lead to very nervous time for my family, but luckily it worked out ok.
posted by Iax at 7:26 PM on July 25, 2002