I’m a bit disappointed that you seem to have missed an opportunity to inform and amuse us regarding the inbreeding Fugates in the classic article: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a980724.html
Although the treatment for met-H is quite simple (i.e., methylene blue taken orally) there is a rather amusing side effect to said treatment…
Methylene blue is excreted as a blue coloration in the urine, allowing the Fugates to believe that they had simply urinated the blue away.
Interesting that in the few days I’ve been here, there seems to be a prevalence of threads in this category which pertain to execretory matters. Perhaps our esteemed moderator should change the name of the category to “Comments on Cecil’s Colons.”
I was curious to see what a blue person would look like, so I searched for a Fugates family photo album. The best I could come up with was this. The only thing that seems to be blue about the two people in this picture is their demeanor.
So, have there been published color photos of any members of the Fugates, pre-treatment?
Ahh, methylene blue–what memories. Relatives of mine used to breed rabbits for the fur, and they used methylene blue as some sort of pregnancy test, from what I remember.
My cousin and I sometimes put it in drinks, or cookies, or whatever. The urine of our victims was most often reported to be green, maybe from the blue coloration mixing with the urine’s usual yellow.
As for the Ainus, puh-leeeze, they AREN’T blue. I met one in Japan, and a close Japanese friend of mine who was raised in Hokkaido (northernmost Japanese island, where most Ainus live) went to school with several. His description matched what I saw–more American Indian than oriental, by a long shot. Skin hue? uh, try… a tan, or reddish tan, like American Indians. Darker than most Europeans.
But it IS cold up in Hokkaido, so maybe when it’s REAL cold, their lips turn blue. That’s the only explanation I can find for the mention of the Ainus.
I think that shthompson’s email was probably correct. I did a few searches on blue people and most of references to the Fugates were from medical sites. The Tuaregs came up almost as frequently, and nearly all the results were concerned with Anthropology. So it seems to me that the querent’s husband had heard about the Tuaregs in college.
This depends upon how you define a “good chance”. If both of your parents have the recessive gene, but are not blue themselves, the chance that any particular offspring will be blue is 1/4. By the time the couple has their third child, the chances of one being blue are greater than 50% (about 57.8%). If the couple is not freaked out by blue children and produces six kids, the chances of at least one blue child go up to 82%. Given that this would not be an uncommon family size for residents of Appalachia, it would be better to say that if both parents have it, there’s a good chance they will produce a blue child.
I also just don’t think this was the reference from the column. Anthropolgists seem to have a good deal of interest in the Tuareg, so I think it is likely that they are the “Blue People” Lonijo’s husband heard about in Anthropology class.
Good luck finding the origin of the expression. I’ll bet it’s as much a mystery as the origin of moulignon (sp?) is to Sicilians.
Hello,
Allow me to introduce myself to the board. Squirfster is the name…anyway,
I have a real problem with these blue people, my partner is Hindu and she cannot explain the colour of her religious icons that have exsisted (as she say’s) for 6000 years.
But what I have gleaned from study of the Hindu pantheon is that Shiva is the god that drank the poison in the river because Krishna would not drink it…and has a groeter (sp?) under his neck where the poison still exsists. Read the Mahabharat as well as the Ramayan, stick with it Paul.
Anyway, as blue people in India born at that time(with that condition) would be treated as gods because they were unique in the different isolated communities of the time, I suppose the Hindus are lucky that they done good rather than bad, possibly due to the relevence these ancient tribes held these “gods” in awe because of the colour of the skin.
Anyway they are all still blue…even Umba (sp?)…but funnily enough not any in recent history.
Squirfster.
Cecil’s sarcastic quip aside, I don’t think it’s as silly as a little dirt on the skin. I think the problem as described was that the dye soaks into the skin, giving it a (somewhat) permanent pigmentation that does not wash off, no matter how you scrub. There are things that do so, for instance nitric acid will make a stain on your skin that stays till the skin replaces itself. This pigment could perhaps get into the bloodstream, and thus get introduced to the baby in vitro.
Of course if someone wants to dig up a cite… (DDG? )
Well, being a Hindu - I’ve been taught the story of the “blue” gods many times. Vishnu (an incarnation of Krishna) and Shiva are both blue. (the three main gods are Brahma (not blue), Shiva (blue) and Vishnu (blue). It is true that Shiva drank the poisons of the world and thus became blue. However, the reasoning behind Krishna (and for that matter Vishnu) being blue is a little unclear. There have been many different takes on it, but a pandit-ji (scholar) of the veda’s once told me that in the veda’s there are many references to land that has thus disappeared under the ocean (hmm…atlantis maybe?) where there were many great cities, etc. The rest of the story is a little hypothetical but as the story goes, the land was inhabitted by a a race of blue people, specifically these people were “Superior” to the races still on the planet today (in terms of intelligence, physical traits, etc). These people were also in close contact with the ancient people of india, whom they were very friendly with. Eventually the land mass sinks into the ocean and the remnants of the blue people sublime into the native indian population, effectivly destroying their culture, but passing it on in bits and pieces to the native indians. The indians in turn added the stories and the belief of Shiva and Vishnu, etc. You get the idea from there…But remember…its just a theory. (I wish I could read Sanskrit…so i could read the veda’s myself) and verify the stories of this 5th race of people and the lost continent.
The second one is supposed to be “Luna Fugate” who was reported to have been quite blue. Not photographs, but perhaps it might give the idea if the artist was attempting to be at all accurate. That site seems to be the home page of a biology professor, who might be able to tell you something of the provenance of those images.
I am only 13 so I dont know to much about this but I do know a little about the Fugates. My science teacher was telling us about dominant and recesive genes and used them as an example. It was cool because she showed us a test tube thing that had a chemical in it then added that blue methilene or whatever its called and stirred it up so it became blue. The strange thing however was that it turned back to is origanal color after a few moments so she had to stir it up again. She gave us an assignment to look up the fugates and this site is what i found. Thanks for listening guys. lol
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