WTF? Does this happen very often? Is there any good research into this phenomenon?
You know, I read that story earlier today, and nothing in it links the bite directly to him walking. It links the bite to rehab, where the rehab nurse discovered that his nerves were active, but only the headline suggests that the bite is what caused it. I’ll need a bit more info before I believe that Brown Recluse venom causes nerves to regrow.
WAG: He could have resumed function years ago, but the spider bite prompted his trip to the hospital, setting of a series of events that led to the realization (the spasm). I doubt the bite healed him. He probably had some potential all these years and never knew it.
The first thing that jumped out at me about this story is that the man is in California, well outside the range of brown recluse spiders. Scroll down on that page for a map of it’s range, as well as a good description of spiders mistaken for the recluse.
Of course, he could have gotten the bite somewhere else, or by a hitchiking recluse brought in via suitcase or whatever. They do hide in clothes, or piles of stuff.
The Wiki recluse entry specifically addresses misdiagnosed “recluse” bites on the West Coast:
The Wikizens work fast, this case is already entered on the page.
In trying to theorize how the bite could have stimulated a response, it would be necessary to ID the right spider in order to determine the toxin, or if it was some other cause.
I see in preview that Philster says what is probably the case. Here’s another version of the story.
I bet it was the same kind of spider that bit Spider-man!
I, too, was very suspicious of a recluse bite in California. Here’s an interesting rant on that topic by one of the foremost experts on spider venom, Rick Vetter:
http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html
If the response of the wheel-chair guy was due to a spider bite, then it would be more likely to be a neurotoxic bite, such as the widow, mouse and Australasian funnel-web spiders, which attack the nervous system. Necrotoxins, such as are found in the recluse spiders, attack tissues surrounding the bite.
I’d like to know who identified the spider. People in Australia have all sorts of stories about white-tailed spider bites, but it is now known that they don’t cause necrotic reactions. When you quiz them on the id of the spider, they usually hadn’t seen it. They were just ‘told’ that it was a spider bite and then ‘told’ it must have been a white-tailed.
I won’t see any follow up in the press way over here, so if there is, could someone post it here please?
I would suspect Philster has got it right.
The sort of thing that happens all the time is that an under-educated, over-credulous reporter gets key details wrong and fails to validate key facts. This is usually compounded by a headline writer summarizing the story into a few words geared more toward capturing readers than conveying accuracy.
For this reason, all sorts of miracles and misinformation “happen” quite frequently.
On some days Bat Boy Lives! ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1402728239/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books )even in mainline reporting outlets.
Thanks, everybody. Color me skeptical, then.
A day or two after this story came out, someone sent it to me (as the keeper of “Spider Myths”) as a brand-new spider myth. It’s not really a brand-new myth though, just the ten-millionth repetition of those perennially phony “a spider bit me while I slept” and “brown recluses are in California.” But with a slightly new wrinkle in that the guy actually benefited enormously from being treated for the spider bite he didn’t have. Others haven’t been so lucky – the conditions that were misdiagnosed as spider bites proved fatal.
I sent a message through the TV station web site to the reporter who did the story, pointing out that to publicize a “spider bite” with no evidence of a real spider being involved has two extremely bad effects: people will get treated for “spider bites” instead of for the conditions they really have, some of which are potentially fatal; and people misled into thinking they could have dangerous spiders in their homes will use pesticides and make the serious problem of pesticide pollution even worse.
Predictably, my message was ignored.
Very impressed to meet you, arachnologus. I know your site well and respect it highly. I hope that your presence on this Board will help raise the profile of spiders to the awesome heights they deserve!
The eight months of rehab (from elelle’s link) probably helped.
Why does this thread make me want to ask "Is he strong? Listen bud, he’s got radioactive blood."?
Maybe it was a holy Pentecostal spider “laying on hands” four times more effectively than a human could!
Unfortunately, updates and retractions never get the attention the original story gets.
What likely happened was that Blancarte’s legs weren’t completely paralyzed and, in fact, were slowly healing. A bite of some sort — more on this below — got him to a hospital, where medical professionals realized that there was nerve and muscle activity unrelated to the bite. Through physical therapy he slowly regained the ability to walk, albeit with a walker.
Good for him. What a great stroke of luck. But that’s a far cry from headlines such as “NorCal Paraplegic Cured by Spider Bite.”
Thanks, HorseloverFat, for the voice of reason and follow-up. If it was a spider, he shoud be eternally grateful to the little beggar. I think it’s a great story the way it really played out.