I read about one of these cases before, it turns out the guy actually snacked all the time. “But I don’t actually need to…”
3 days without food or water just seems like 70 years. Throw him in a box for a week and see what it looks like to go without food or water for 140 years.
Newsflash: religious man makes ridiculous and absurd claim.
I’m shocked, really.
But there’s a team of doctors! Science!
Science!
Sooo…he’s the first of a race of atomic supermen who will rule the world!!!
.
.
.
and that’s why he doesn’t need to eat food or drink! Just needs to refuel every hundred years or so.
“Man lives for 70 years without water and food”
you call that living…?
Well, he could be drinking soda and then eating nothing but vegemite and vitamins. That stuff doesn’t count as food.
The BBC’s show title (spoken) is “Medical Man or Medical Mystery?” which suggests an excluded middle: fraud or hoax. The article says, “A team of doctors in western India is carrying out a study on a hermit who claims to have survived without food and water for 70 years.” Doctors? Doctors? Just what do doctors know about fooling people?
In other news, a team of podiatrists is studying brain dysfunction…
There was a woman here in Australia some years ago who was peddling this schtick. Turns out she admitted that she would eat for social reasons “now and then”. When a TV current affairs show locked her in a hotel room and monitored her, they had to stop after some days for health reasons, as a result of which she was able to say “See? I survived your test! Breatharianism roolz!”
It got particularly sad when a couple got convicted of manslaughter for "treating"some misguided soul for some problem by starving him (her? can’t remember) to death.
I know lots of people like that.
They don’t drink water - just beer.
They don’t eat food - just Pringles.
Sounds like your average student in a dorm.
I think it’s cruel that one of the sponsored Google ads I’m seeing is for a site where you can “Get Recipes, Menus, Cooking Secrets & More”
Maybe they have recipes for Air Pancakes* and Meditation Strudel.
Can you gain weight through supernatural intervention? I know people who claim this happens to them. “I just look at a pie, and I gain five pounds!”
*which you can eat if you get hungry while playing air guitar.
Oh my exhaulted Og, BAND NAME!!!
Sorry, but have to do it…In fact am now going to go recruit some others to start a band with me. Just to name it Meditation Strudel.
Maybe they could eat a Rubber biscuit ?
What is wrong with studying this? I agree they need some professional magicians to follow him around too. But he is being studied and after 8 days under 24/7 surveillance he hasn’t gone to the bathroom or eaten/drank anything and I assume his weight is the same.
If they can reasonably rule out fraud, then study away.
Are they going to watch him long enough to rule out fraud? If someone claims to never need to eat or drink, I’d say the only way to test this claim is to watch them for long enough to ensure his survival without food or water is genuinely unusual. According to this link, they’re only going to study him for a week. Surviving without food for one week is possible for anyone. Surviving for a week without water is tougher, but assuming he’s in a temperature controlled environment and not exerting himself, it’s possible.
Also, I find the claim that he doesn’t drink any water (or get fluids from any source) to be impossible to believe. The article claims that he hasn’t urinated since admission to hospital, that his kidneys produce small amounts of urine but he doesn’t pass urine and it just “disappears” Even if this were true, people can’t maintain fluid balance by not drinking and not urinating. Everyone also has fluid loss from perspiration and respiration. Even if he doesn’t sweat much, he loses a little bit of water every time he breathes. That has to be made up from somewhere.
I think the study is going to last 3 weeks, and has gone on since April 22nd so far. If the guy isn’t cheating, the fact that he has already gone 8+ days w/o water or using the bathroom could lead to breakthroughs in human physiology if they rule out fraud and figure out if/how he does that. Most people cannot go 8 days w/o water or using the bathroom w/o major negative health effects that the guy doesn’t seem to be having. Unless he is an amazing tricker and has fooled several 24/7 cameras, various biological scanners (they don’t tell you which ones they use, if it is PET, MRI or what, but they do mention somehow looking inside his bladder and kidneys) and 30 observers then he may have some weird talent that should be looked into. Some people are immune to HIV. Those people should be studied too.
If it is impossible to believe, that is why you need to conduct heavily controlled studies to investigate it. I’d rather they do that than dismiss the concept. If he does do it, I have no idea how. But if you can rule out fraud with enough surveillance, medical diagnostics and oversight, then figuring out what makes his body different it would be a medical breakthrough.
The sad part isn’t that the guy is making this delusional claim. The sad part is there are people with a doctors license that are studying the man. Should they be seeing patients?
Here you go:
Emphasis mine. Fraud. I think PZ Meyers made the same observation, but I can’t find his article for some reason.
ETA: Here it is
They have some sort of cute little handheld ultrasound scanner to specifically check the bladder, when I was in for my hysterectomy, the first time I peed after they took the catheter out they used it to see if I was able to pee out everything in my bladder.
Or maybe he is related to Cat … after all, if a kitteh is traumatized enough they stop peeing and crapping [which can go on for several days and can end up being dangerous]
Among the comments on that PZ Meyers link is the standard “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” response from skeptics of any guise.
But, if the world was full of die-hard skeptics insisting on concrete “evidence”, anything disbelieved on its presentation would never even be investigated because it would be deemed “too ridiculous” to be taken seriously.