back to article Brain-sucking parasitic killer menaces warming lake waters

Eat your heart out, David Cronenberg. Mad CIA frankenscience runs amuck in the American heartland. Brain-wasting parasite fans techno-paranoia. The pitch would write itself. Unfortunately, the reality of biological science is sometimes more than the stuff that cinematic sci-fi fantasy is made on. American health officials …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So now we know ...

    ... what happened to Darl McBride. :-)

  2. LaeMi Qian

    OMG!!!

    Check the water supply at your local parliament house!!!

  3. Cameron Colley

    Is there a new writer onboard?

    Was amanfromMars hired to write the first paragraph of this article?

  4. Graham Dawson Silver badge

    Small samples

    Statistically it's not significant no matter how you twist it. When you're working with such a tiny group you will inevitably hit apparently huge, sudden changes entirely by chance.

  5. Stephen Gray

    Brain-sucking parasitic killer

    If its a brain sucking organism it will soon die out in the US!

  6. Maverick

    Darl McBride?

    . . surely you mean Mariah Carey??

  7. Nano nano

    Watershed ...

    Perhaps the writer should check the meaning of "succubus" ...?

  8. Keith Turner

    Not the meek after all

    Does this mean that global warming will see us humans off in a non-cinematic way?

    No big rocks, no tsunamis, no continental-sized fires?

    Just tiny bugs.

    Or is it a zombie plague instead?

    Natures way of dealing with humans - get rid of them, see what emerges from the swamps next time.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Peter Jackson...

    Is looking to buy the rights as we speak....

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It can't really be called a succubus...

    ...Unless it has sex with its victims.

  11. Ian McNee

    Ah-ha!

    This clearly demonstrates the *real* motive for Dubya dragging his feet on climate change: the secret brain-eating bugs of doom weapons program! As everyone knows all Mad Mullahs(TM) routinely swim in warm fresh water lakes - it all becomes clear!

    Cue black helicopters...now where is my Bacofoil bonnet?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So now we know ...

    ... what happened to aManfromMars! :-)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Ah-ha!

    ...and Bush is clearly safe himself...or possibly an early (successful) test subject?

  14. Dan

    @Is there a new writer onboard?

    not in the least bit tedious, you chump.

  15. Master Baker

    RE: Succubus

    I knew a girl once who would 'suckabus', all for the price of a kebab and a bottle of white lightning. Us on the bus would pool our funds.

  16. Jacob Reid

    Hmm...

    Sounds to me like a relative of the headcrab. Any reports on whether the dead bodies are then getting up and killing people?

  17. Mark

    Life imitating art

    One of the characters on House MD almost died from this in season two.

  18. Alastair MacDiarmid

    common in thermal pools in New Zealand

    We were always advised as kids to avoid putting our heads under water in natural thermal pools when swimming, most these days use a heat transfer system to avoid contact with thrmal water that's been in contact with the soil where the amoeba contamination comes from.

  19. Mike Moyle

    Howzabout them Brain Bugs...?

    ...Make that,"the amoeba's preference for warm, *stagnant*, *muddy* water in a rapidly warming world..."

    (I saw the same (Meet the Press?) clip, Burke. You know, the one where the interviewer kept trying to get the doctor to start screaming "we'll all be murdered in our beds", and the doctor kept going back to, essentially, "if you go swimming in mudholes, you might catch it, or any number of other nasty things."

  20. Caspah Scottorn

    Nazis at the Roman Baths

    This explains why the guards (customer safety staff) at the Roman baths in Bath shout at all the small kids when they touch the warm water.

  21. Shawn Passmore

    Succubus?.. Did you mean...

    Perhaps the author meant Illithid?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illithid

  22. David Wilkinson

    Its a freaky new way to die.

    1995-2004 only 23 cases, 6 this year. Even if the increase is due to global warming its nothing to be alarmed about.

    Still death by brain sucking Amoeba is a fun new way to die.

    Should make a good episode of House MD.

  23. Nick Leverton

    @Life imitating art

    >One of the characters on House MD almost died from this in season two.

    Oooh, don't tell me, I know this one ... his team thought it was two other conditions first, and nearly killed the patient through treating them, but then clever Doctor House worked out it was really a fourth thing.

    No ? you mean they've changed their single plotline ?

  24. Curtis W. Rendon

    @Howzabout them Brain Bugs...?

    One of those recent amoeba cases was from lake LBJ here in central Texas. Neither stagnant or muddy... but the temperature is definitely going up.

  25. Erick Wagoner

    @ Stephen Gray

    "If its a brain sucking organism it will soon die out in the US!"

    Give us a little more credit than that .... it would die out rapidly in State Legislatures (Sp?) and in Washington DC however! All that hot air in those places surely heat the water to the perfect temperature!

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