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This item is another example of a common online phenomenon: Someone makes an image available, the picture begins to circulate through sharing, the original attribution or explanation for the image gets lost along the way (or was never provided), people begin to make up stories to explain the origin of the now-sourceless picture, and those fabricated explanations become attached to the image as it continues to circulate. We've seen this phenomenon before in the maggot photographs (disturbing image warning), only in this case it isn't just the explanation that's fabricated; the image is a phony one created through digital manipulation as well. This image appeared on the internet back in June 2003 (on a web site with a collection of other manipulated photographs); at that time it carried no explanation at all and was soon attributed by others to some new type of body modification. Not until a couple of months later did it pick up the story about an anthropologist named Susan McKinley who returned from a South American expedition to notice a very strange rash on her breast caused by larvae which were feeding off the fat, tissue, and even milk canals of her bosom. No known medical condition causes a result like the one depicted here, and the breast tissue around the supposed larvae infestation (larvae of what?) is too healthy (no redness, inflammation, or necrosis) to be believable. This image appears to be the product of the melding of a photograph of a woman's breast and a picture of something similar to a lotus seed pod: In 2005 someone combined the picture and text quoted in the example above with an existing video clip that seemingly showed maggot-like creatures being removed by forceps from a woman's infected breast, and in November 2005 we began seeing versions that claimed the patient had developed her condition due to the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005: The referenced clip was a genuine video, but it had no connection to Hurricane Katrina. It showed the treatment of a Nigerian patient with breast lesions and multiple sinuses containing Tumbu fly larvae. (Fourteen separate larvae were eventually extracted from the breast.) The authors of a 2004 medical journal article on the case noted at the time that only one case has been reported in the English literature. In 2006, someone combined the following text with a series of photographs of patients experiencing what look like severe rashes, infections, and necrosis of the upper chest and breasts. The specific origins of these photos are unknown to us, but they likely depict the advanced stages of breast cancer. (WARNING: Viewers may find the pictures displayed in this link disturbing.)
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