# How common are tapeworms in people?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-tapeworms-in-people/132836>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 18, 2002, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-tapeworms-in-people/132836 "2002-10-18T15:22:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-tapeworms-in-people/132836/1 "2002-10-18T15:22:40Z")

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A guy at work was telling us he saw a show on Discover last night about Tapeworms. He said that the show says most people have them… including people in North America.

Now, I did not see the show but that sounds quite suprising. I did a quick google search but didn’t find much info with stats.

Does anyone know how common Tapeworm (and for that matter, other worm parasites) are in the “first” world?

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**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-tapeworms-in-people/132836/2 "2002-10-18T18:40:25Z")

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The [Centers for Disease Control](http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00016167.htm), in a 1992 report, found that of over 200,000 stool samples analyzed by various state diagnostic laboratories, 20% had some sort of parasite (mostly protozoans), several percent had some sort of worms, and 0.1% had some sort of tapeworm.

I suspect that the “most people” canard has to do with (1) people with worms may be overrepresented in the doctor’s office; (2) people with “colonic cleansing” and “parasite therapies” tend to diagnose everything as worms, even if they haven’t found any; (3) worms are endemic in other countries, especially those with poor procedures for handling meat or manure.

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**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-tapeworms-in-people/132836/3 "2002-10-18T21:11:31Z")

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Thanks for the link!

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**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2002, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-tapeworms-in-people/132836/4 "2002-10-18T22:36:49Z")

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There is a rumour on my campus (propagated by a biology professor, which lends it credibility) that one of the pathobiologists on campus deliberately ingested a tapeworm or somesort so that he could study teh effects it has on him.

Weird.