Holy Smokes! :surprised

Herbal cells may settle down and parasitize on the organism of a human or an animal

Geneticists say that mutations seriously change the set of chromosomes, and people with mutations can thus hardly be called humans. In Yerevan in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, 18-year-old girl Narine Aivasyan shocked doctors with her unusual disease. The girl complained about an abscess on her wrist that had been hurting her for a long period already. When doctors opened the bandage on Narine’s hand they saw two very thin thorns sticking out of the hand.

The girl failed to enter a higher education institution after she left school, and had to help her mother about the house and assisted her in a store where the woman worked. The girl was fond of pot plants and devoted much time to looking after her plants. Once, Narine pricked herself on a cactus while watering plants. Some thorns got stuck in her wrist. The parents immediately disinfected the wound but it still festered and even expanded. Narine was reluctant to visit a doctor. She had to go to a hospital in a month when a point of a thorn emerged on the skin right on the place of the red wound. Doctors easily removed the strange object, but more thorns turned up on the same spot soon.

Head of the immunology and virology laboratory at the Armenia research center Tigran Davtyan says the world medicine has never known before that herbal cells may settle down and parasitize on the organism of a human or an animal. Deeper study of the thorns removed out of the girl’s wrist confirmed their vegetative origin. It turned out that the thorns belonged to a cactus that many people had at home.

The only way to save the girl was to perform an operation to remove the fistula to stop the cactus from parasitizing all about the organism. The wound healed up after the operation and did not trouble the girl for four years.

Narine’s mother says the girl could not recover from the shock for a very long period and feared that the thorns might reappear. The tragedy made the girl reserved and unsociable. But still she kept on looking after her pot plants.

One day Narine noticed her wrist turned red once again but she would not confess to her parents that the disease reappeared. The girl felt her forearm swell and soon a thorn as thick as a match burst her skin.

This time a fistula appeared in a sinew zone. Narine clenched her fists, the muscles pushed new thorns out and doctors removed them with pincers. At that, the wound was not bleeding. Doctors removed from 70 to 100 thorns from the girl’s arm every day. But they still appeared later, which suggested there were two or three parasite cells still staying in the girl’s organism. Doctors from many countries stated there was not a surgical but rather a microbiological problem.

When researchers studied the bigger thorns they arrived at a conclusion that they were no longer of vegetative origin. As a result of mutation, the patient got new unknown cells, some sort of a hybrid of a human and a plant. In other words, the young girl was turning into a cactus.

Experts believe the terrible metamorphosis sounds warning for mankind. ‘Evolution and progress seriously damage the human immune system. People become more vulnerable to unknown parasites and viruses,’ Tigran Davtyan says.

Now the girl is 26. When Narine had blood poisoning some people rumored she died. But parents of the girl told doctors Narine was alive but felt too bed. The strange disease made her extremely apathetic and pessimistic as she knows that doctors obviously cannot help her.