Worming your way to a new you

An American mother gave her daughter a pill filled with tapeworm eggs to help her lose weight quickly... and didn't tell her. The unnamed mother thought she was doing best for her child because there was a beauty pageant in a couple of weeks and she wanted her to look her best. But weeks later, the girl is in agonising pain and a scan at the hospital shows there is something live in her tummy... and she is not pregnant. Shortly after being given a stomach drug to help diagnosis, the girl rushes to the toilet and amid her screams, suddenly all is revealed. The toilet bowl is a seething mass of tapeworms. Caught on camera, paediatric nurse Maricar Cabral-Osorio is clearly close to being sick as she tells viewers: "It was a toilet bowl full of tapeworms. It was so gross and she had pooped all these tapeworms. There were a couple that were very long and wiggling around trying to get out of the toilet bowl." The incident at a Florida hospital was featured in an episode of the medical documentary Untold Stories of the ER where nurse Cabral-Osorio is seen re-assuring the girl that she is now going to be okay. The nurse adds: "We were wondering how did she get those tapeworms, and then you saw the mom turn white. She was apologizing to the girl. It's like 'I'm so sorry. You know, I did it just to make you a little skinnier. You needed some help before we went on to the pageant.'" The pill, for the record, was bought in Mexico. That's just wrong. I would never feed tapeworm eggs to anyone, especially someone who doesn't deserve it. If you want to put that crap in your kid's digestive system, you own the consequences of that course of action, just as you would any other decision you make.