Brain Eating Amoeba

Don't we already have enough to worry about, like terror sites offering videos on how to fly 747s, and wondering if the next time we get on a 747 there could be terrorists on board who had learned to fly such a plane from videos found on terror sites?

Do we now have to think twice about taking a swim in the lake for fear that an amoeba might eat our brains?! Eeeekk, doesn't that sound like a scene from an Aliens movie?

PHOENIX (AP) - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER- ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases—three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

Full story here.

P.S. Yes, it is true that people don't normally learn how to fly planes from videos or flight simulators alone, but with the terrorists, they only need to know how to guide the plane to their intended target or just crash it so they can kill themselves and everyone in the plane. Not a very happy thought especially for someone like me who is always very tense when I have to fly any where.