How I love lists.  If you ever have problems stringing out an idea into a column, don't bother, just come up with a list.  It's great.  Now, I know what you're thinking.  It's very poor taste to laugh at the sick and dying – and in fact that's the first disease we're going to look at ...  

Antisocial Personality Disorder 

Sociopaths have a limited range of human emotions.  Most notably, they have a complete lack of empathy for the suffering of others.  They often take risks, drugs, indulge in criminal behaviour, experience uncontrollable rage and enjoy membership of the H.R. Nicholls Society. 

Sociopaths do not fear physical pain or punishment.  This trait explains their disregard for their actions and their lack of empathy for the suffering of others.  Many ‘high achievers' have in fact been classified as sociopaths.  In childhood, sociopaths are often bed wetters, pyromanics, and are cruel to animals. 

Though I only ever completed first year psychology, I would diagnose you as a sociopath if you continue to read this column, as it will delight in the suffering of others.   

Fatal Familial Insomnia 

Incurable hereditary disease of the brain that stops you sleeping completely.  Then you die.  The gene responsible is found in just 28 families worldwide. 

It's caused by a mutation of a protein that causes plaque to develop on the thalamus – the region of the brain responsible for sleep.  The disease begins at around the age of 50.  The first symptom is insomnia, resulting in panic attacks and phobias.  Soon hallucinations begin.  Then there's a complete inability to sleep, followed by rapid weight loss. 

Unsurprisingly, after months of flicking between Hotdogs' Up Late Game Show, Quizmania and Midnight Zoo the sufferer becomes demented and mute.  Then they die.  There is no cure. 

What's incredible is I've noticed symptoms of this disease in some of my friends in the days directly after New Years Eve.  Especially Gregor.     

Tapeworm 

Ten metre parasitic worms that live in the digestive tract.  They use their head to attach to the intestine and have a segmented body containing male and female sexual organs which are shed.  These segments – resembling a grain of rice – can, scarily, move on their own, and can pop out whenever they want. 

Tapeworm are caught from eating poorly cooked meat.  They are treated with a single pill.  However the worms, which can have been living inside you for up to 10 years, go through a half hour of death throes – squirming, twisting and having spasms inside you in the process.  When killed, the parasite must be removed from the body – in a literal hand-over-hand process. All the time you can feel it slithering gently through your digestive tract.  Nice. 

But that's not bad at all, at least relatively.  Some species of tapeworm can migrate into surrounding tissues and eventually different organ systems.  Larvae develop into large fluid filled cysts after travelling in the blood stream all over the body.  Cysts are common in the lungs and liver – and slowly grow for between 5-20 years.  Some tapeworm, left untreated, guarantee death within 15 years.  When cysts are present in the central nervous system they can lead to seizure, dementia and irreversible brain damage.  The traditional "ye olde" treatment involved starving the patient, hanging a piece of meet in front of their mouth and waiting to grab the emerging tapeworm, but that unfortunately could not be substantiated.   

Chronic Hiccups 

Chronic Hiccups can last for over a month – the longest case is 68 years, for a total of 430 million hiccups.  Long bouts can lead to depression, weight loss, insomnia, physical pain and exhaustion.  Though even foetuses hiccup, they don't seem to have any purpose. 

Home remedies for curing them include breathing into a paper bag, standing on your head, drinking from the far side of the glass, and eating granulated sugar.  Clinical trials show that sex can stop hiccups and as a regular sufferer, I assure you the opposite is also the case.   

Human Maggot Infestation 

The sufferer is literally eaten alive by maggots.  Caused when the larvae of the fleshfly or blowfly begin to feed on the person's tissue, quickly spreading through the body.  The larvae are originally laid in an open wound, a weeping sore or in the mouth, nose or ears.  Sometimes maggots are introduced on purpose to sores that aren't healing to eat the dead tissue.  One prevention method for this disease is to spread artificially reared sterilized male flies in the environment – which breed with females and cause them to lay unfertilised eggs.  Once the larvae have finished feeding they mature and metamorphoses into either adult blowflies, Hillsong pastors, used car salesmen or motivational speakers.     

Cateplaxy   

When a cateplaxy sufferer laughs, they drop to the floor paralysed for five minutes.  Cateplaxy is often suffered by narcoleptics – those who fall asleep uncontrollably. 

Many narcoleptics also hallucinate.  It is believed when they laugh, get angry or are surprised, they instantly go into REM sleep – a process that usually takes hours. I suspect many Chaser forum contributers have cateplaxy because if they're amused, they're asleep on their keyboard – they post such nasty comments because that's the only time they're awake. 

Certain forms of stimulus can bring on narcoplexy – such as going to the ballet, opera or listening to a Barry Jones speech.  This has led to calls for them to be banned.   

Anthrax 

Anthrax starts with a scary name and just gets worse.  It's a spore carrying bacterium you get from exposure to infected animal tissue.  It is scary because anthrax spores lie dormant for decades in soil, infect an animal, feed on it until it's gone, then lie dormant again. 

There are three types – skin, inhaled and intestinal.  Ninety-five percent of natural cases are skin – you get a painless black ulcer and probably won't die.  Intestinal anthrax has you vomiting blood, and there's a good chance you'll die.  Inhalation Anthrax is usually fatal – you get it if you're slicing buttons from animal horn or stretching skin to make drums, which is pretty scary when you consider you usually associate disease with moisture. 

Of course, Anthrax is most famed as a biological weapon.  It was used in 1978 by the Rhodesian government during its war with black nationalists.  The UK tested it on a Scottish island, rendering it uninhabitable for 50 years and the US once had a spill which forced them to seal an entire building with glue and plastic.  The UK and US armies routinely vaccinate their armies against it in certain war zones like Iraq.  Probably a wise idea given that Republican Presidents Regean and Bush Snr sold it to Saddam.  After anthrax spores were mailed to American Senators and news outlets in 2001, many government organizations worldwide have been forced to use protective equipment when sorting mail.  Thankfully ‘weaponised' anthrax of this kind is very hard to make. 

OK, that's it – things just got too disturbing.  Diseases that didn't make the cut include Ebola, Necrosis, Leprosy, Genital Warts etc, which were just too disturbing to discuss.  But I have got one more titbit for you.... 

It seems my campaign against 4WD's is catching on......  

www.timbrunero.com 

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