The Worst Parasite

Fasciolopsis buskii is the fluke (flatworm) that I find in every case of cancer, HIV infection, Alzheimer's, Crohn's dis­ease, Kaposi's, endometriosis, and in many people without these diseases. Its life cycle involves six different stages:

 

Stage

Normal Life Cycle

 

1 Egg

Expelled with bowel movement onto soil. Washed by rain into ponds.

egg

2 Miracidia

Hatches from egg in water. Has cilia, can swim vigorously and must find intermediate snail host in one to two hours or may be too exhausted to in­vade.

Miracidia

3 Redia

Develop inside miracidia as little balls until expelled. Those are "mother" redia, and each one bears "daughter" redia for up to 8 months, all still inside the snail, and living on the fluids in the lymphatic spaces. Similarly, daughter redia are continually developing cer­caria.

Redia

4 Cercaria

Have a tail, use it to exit from snail and swim to a plant. If the snail is feeding on a plant, cercaria can latch onto plant with sucker mouth and start to encyst (form a "cocoon") within minutes. Tail breaks off and swims away to dissolve.

Cercaria

5 Metacercaria

Two-walled cyst. The outer wall is very sticky. But as you eat the plant it is stuck to, the least pressure will break it, leaving the cyst in the mouth. The "almost unbreakable" inner cyst wall protects it from chewing, and the keratin-like coat prevents digestion by stomach juices. However when it reaches the duodenum, contact with intestinal juices dissolves away the cyst-wall and frees it. It then fastens itself to the intestinal lining and begins to develop into an adult.

Metacercaria

 

6 Adult Lives in your intestine and can pro­duce 1000 eggs per bowel movement and live many years.

 

Fasciolopsis' normal life cycle

 

Note that the adult is the only stage that "normally" lives in the human (and then only in the intestine). Fasciolopsis depends on a snail, called a secondary host, for part of its life cycle. But when your body has solvents in it, the other five stages can develop in you!

 

If propyl alcohol is the solvent, the intestinal fluke is invited to use another organ as a secondary host-this organ will become cancerous. If benzene is the solvent, the intestinal fluke uses the thymus for its secondary host, setting the stage for AIDS. Wood alcohol invites pancreatic flukes to use the pancreas as a secondary host. This leads to pancreatic dysfunction which we call diabetes. If xylene (or toluene) are the solvents, I typically see any of four flukes using the brain as a secondary host. If methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) or methyl butyl ketone (MBK) are the solvents, the uterus becomes a secondary host and endometriosis a likely result.

 

This is a new kind of parasitism, based on pollution. I call the diseases caused by fluke stages in inappropriate locations Fluke Disease; it is discussed in more detail later.

 

Are tapeworms and roundworms affected by solvents this way, too? This is a fascinating and very important question. 

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