Worm book question

Model Organism: Worms Scientific Discussion
1

Hi,

I am writing a book and was wondering if there is a worm that fits the following criteria:

  1. Visible to the naked eye
  2. Parasitic in nature but highly debilitating (preferably fatal)
  3. Must infect humans
  4. Typically lives in the human gut
  5. Could plausibly cause infection from direct ingestion

To give a little more background here is the scenario I am imagining (forgive me as it is dark and highly abbreviated here), but I want to know if it is scientifically plausible:

A man who is infected is killed and cut open in the midsection. Another man is forced to ingest the worms such that he is debilitated/killed slowly.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or if not suggest the closest thing to this?

Thanks for any insights you can provide!

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2

so it’s a romance you’re writing then?

Given your synopsis of the proposed book, I would think it is not really important what the parasite is called. If you sit long enough I am sure you will come up with a name for a fictional parasite and also a reason for wanting to write the book?

I have an alternative scenario: A man writes a book and another man is forced to read it by the sadistic author…waddyathink?

3

Most people on this forum are deeply knowledgeable about one particular nematode, the thoroughly innocuous and non-infectious C. elegans. This may not be the best place to ask your question; you really want someone expert in parasitology, ecology, or invertebrate pathology.

Still, with the caveat that I really don’t know much more about the species than you can learn from Wikipedia, I’d direct you to Trichinella, on the grounds that it’s sometimes rapidly severely symptomatic and is infectious through the consumption of infected flesh. They’re a little small to be directly seen, though - 1.5 to 3 mm, which is visible but not large.

And as Steve points out, this all seems unnecessarily gory.

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4

i’ll nominate echinococcus multilocularis.
something hannibal lecter would appreciate since it will generate a nice swiss-cheesy texture in the liver (due to the hydatid cysts).
eaten raw (with or without fava beans) these would probably lead to infection (this is how dogs and cats get the parasite from infected rodents).
although typically forming in the liver, they can also occur in other organs, such as the brain and this would produce charmingly debilitating symptoms.

5

There’s also the guinea worm. Females are 60-100 cm long and burrow out of legs. Infection occurs through eating snails carrying worm larvae. But act fast because we almost have it eradicated. (148 cases in 2013 down from 3.5 million in 1986)

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