Email text contributed anonymously, 16 Nov 2002:

Subject: Fw: Careful with dust!!!

Its just like from an alien movie be very careful when u get caught with dust...as following pics will show effects of bad dust to a person.

While he was walking he felt an eye irritation, thinking that it was just regualr dust, he started to rub his eye, in an effort to remove the dust.... then his eyes got really red, and he went and bought some eye drops from a pharmacy....few days passed n his eyes were still red and seems a little swollen.

Again he dismissed it as the constant rubbing and that it will go away. The days go by the swelling of his eye got worse, redder and bigger.... till he decided to go and see a doctor for a check up.

The doctor immediately wanted an operation, being afraid of a tumor growth or cyst. At the operation, what was thought to be a growth or cyst, actually turned out to be a live worm..... what was thought initially to be just mere dust actually was an insect's egg......because of that, my friends, if u do get caught in dust, and the pain persists, pls go see a doctor immediately...... thank you....

Doctors Find Live Worm in Patient's Eye

Bizarre as it may seem, the preceding photos are authentic, although the same cannot be said of the accompanying narrative, which is a fabrication.

We don't know who assembled the emailed collage, but after a painstaking search we did find the source of the individual images, an article entitled "Anterior Orbital Myiasis Caused by Human Botfly," published in the July 2000 number of the Archives of Ophthalmology, a journal of the American Medical Association.

"Myiasis" is the medical term for a maggot (fly larva) infestation of a living body. In this case, the patient was a 5-year-old boy treated by U.S. Air Force surgeons in a rural area of the Republic of Honduras. "The respiratory pore of a late-stage larva of the human botfly (Dermatobia hominis) was located in the anterior orbit," says the article abstract. "The larva was gently removed under general anesthesia through a small incision in the conjunctiva." The patient was apparently none the worse for wear.

It would appear the text of this article was not consulted when the email tale was composed. Neither "bad dust" nor excessive eye rubbing were cited as causes of the infestation in the 5-year-old patient. According to entomologists, the human botfly lays its eggs on the bodies of other insects (such as mosquitoes), which then transfer the eggs to animal or human hosts by direct contact. When a botfly egg hatches, the larva burrows into the host's skin head-first and begins feeding.

This nasty creature is found mainly in Central and South America, but there are other species of flies known to responsible for cases of myiasis in North America, mainly blowflies. According to an epidemiological study conducted in 2000, most instances of myiasis acquired in the United States are the result of blowflies laying their eggs in pre-existing wounds.

None of which is quite as terrifying as the claim that any of us could end up with a worm in our eye simply by being exposed to too much dust, which helps explain why the true facts of the case aren't circulating along with the photos. In folklore, the story's the thing

Now I remember why I didn't go to med school

wish i had not even seen this(shudder)