How to Tell If You Are Infected

How can you tell if the xaiobeetle's parasitic payload has gotten you? Only 40% of the infected will show outward symptoms in the first ten months of infection -- no data is available for longer periods or for recurrence rates. Early indicators are similar to symptoms of the common cold or flu, but often involve more stomach aches as well as infrequent twitching of the eyelids.

For 24 to 26%, parasite induced gashes and wounds develop, but as graphic and traumatic as they are, they're not the part that troubles me the most. Properly treated, the wounds go away, though healing rates are 2x to 3x longer than in uninfected individuals.

It's the nerve damage, especially in the main body trunk, that causes permanent damage, even if your body is subsequently cleared of the parasite. Wounds heal, but nerve damage does not.

Last month, we investigated increased elimination of a certain hemoglobin metabolite (protoporphyrin IX) in the urine as a potential rapid-diagnosis test -- it proves effective during the first two to three months of infection, but the levels return to normal thereafter, so it's really only effective if you have reason to believe you were recently infected.

The lesson is: don't get infected. I hate using the photos from the IICB clinical trials, but the IICB's claims to corporate and off-shore trade-secrets don't fit the moral code I was raised with, or moreover, the moral intuition that all of us were born with. If you have knowledge that can save a life, don't you think there is an imperative to share it?

-Dr. Anton Spiteri