# Spider bite "heals" paralyzed man? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 16, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655 "2009-03-16T19:55:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/1 "2009-03-16T19:55:39Z")
> **[News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines](https://www.aol.com/news/)** > > Get breaking news and the latest headlines on business, entertainment, politics, world news, tech, sports, videos and much more from AOL WTF? Does this happen very often? Is there any good research into this phenomenon? ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/2 "2009-03-16T20:01:50Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/3 "2009-03-16T21:52:39Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![elelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@elelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elelle)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/4 "2009-03-17T03:43:58Z")
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](http://dermatology.cdlib.org/DOJvol5num2/special/recluse.html). 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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider) specifically addresses misdiagnosed “recluse” bites on the West Coast: > [@](#): > > Many arachnologists believe that many bites attributed to the brown recluse in the West Coast are not spider bites at all, or possibly instead the bites of other spider species; for example, the bite of the hobo spider has been reported to produce similar symptoms, and is found in the northwestern United States and southern British Columbia in Canada. However, the toxicity of the hobo spider has been called into question as bites have not been proven to cause necrosis, and the spider is not considered a problem in its native Europe.[27] In addition, published work has shown that tick-induced Lyme disease rashes are often misidentified as brown recluse spider bites.[28] 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](http://cbs13.com/local/Paraplegic.Man.Suffers.2.958151.html) of the story. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/5 "2009-03-17T08:36:41Z")
I bet it was the same kind of spider that bit Spider-man! ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/6 "2009-03-17T09:50:06Z")
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](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. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/7 "2009-03-17T11:46:10Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > WTF? Does this happen very often? Is there any good research into this phenomenon? 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! ( [Bat Boy Lives!: The Weekly World News Guide To Politics, Culture, Celebrities, Alien Abductions, And The Mutant Freaks That Shape Our World: Perel, David: 9781402728235: Amazon.com: Books](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1402728239/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books) )even in mainline reporting outlets. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/8 "2009-03-17T13:54:40Z")
Thanks, everybody. Color me skeptical, then. ---
**Author:** ![arachnologus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dc4da7/32.png) [@arachnologus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arachnologus)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/9 "2009-03-30T08:07:43Z")
A day or two after this story came out, someone sent it to me (as the keeper of “[Spider Myths](http://www.burkemuseum.org/spidermyth/)”) 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. ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/10 "2009-03-30T08:11:31Z")
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! ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/11 "2009-03-30T12:43:28Z")
The eight months of rehab (from **elelle’s** link) probably helped. ---
**Author:** ![Jolly\_Roger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jolly\_Roger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jolly_Roger)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/12 "2009-03-30T16:30:11Z")
Why does this thread make me want to ask "_ **Is he strong? Listen bud, he’s got radioactive blood."** _? ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/13 "2009-03-30T18:27:35Z")
Maybe it was a holy Pentecostal spider “laying on hands” four times more effectively than a human could! ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/14 "2009-03-30T19:43:33Z")
Unfortunately, updates and retractions never get the attention the original story gets. [livescience.com reports](http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090324-bad-spider-bite.html): 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.” ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spider-bite-heals-paralyzed-man/489655/15 "2009-03-31T02:50:25Z")
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.