Boy, 17, dies after having lip pierced

The Telegraph ^ | 11/9/05 | Mikey_1962

[Luddite Patent Counsel]

Would it have been a "Darwin Award" had it been a 10 year old girl getting her ears pierced?

Yes. Do we really want generation after generation of people stupid enough to allow a 10-year-old to have her parts pierced?

Or a 17 year old boy piercing his ear?

Of course. "Men" who want earrings? puh-leez!

Your argument is that the boy deserved to die because he chose to pierce his lip, correct?

Darwin awards are for people who die because of stupid or unduly risky choices, not because they "deserve" to die.

His good grades and not getting in trouble don't carry any weight? That's a fairly uninformed opinion to have.

Good grades and avoiding trouble are nice things, but have little bearing on overall stupidity. John Kerry avoided trouble and got good grades.

[Flightdeck]

I'm not sure dying from an infected piercing makes one eligible for a Darwin award.

[mysterio]

But you reacted with glee that he had died after getting his lip pierced. I'm just curious if you would have felt similar glee had it been a ten year old girl and an ear piercing.

Personally, I see nothing stupid or wrong with having a facial piercing. It is especially popular among the young, and no more stupid than a tattoo or something. I suspect a number of freepers have tattoos. Would they qualify for a "Darwin Award" if they develop an infection?

Don't mean to press you too much on the issue or put you on the spot. I don't have any piercings or tattoos, and I don't much care about either one way or the other. I just hate the whole "Darwin Award" crap that I see all over the net. I mean, that's somebody's kid and a lip piercing isn't exactly counterculture.

[mysterio]

Yes. Do we really want generation after generation of people stupid enough to allow a 10-year-old to have her parts pierced?

I think you're a few thousand years late on that one.

Of course. "Men" who want earrings? puh-leez!

Plenty of real men have worn an earring, or several.

Darwin awards are for people who die because of stupid or unduly risky choices, not because they "deserve" to die.

The kid did nothing stupid or unduly risky. He got one facial piercing.

Good grades and avoiding trouble are nice things, but have little bearing on overall stupidity. John Kerry avoided trouble and got good grades.

If the kid had died in another way, I think your reaction would have been different. So basically, in your mind, a lip piercing on an upstanding young adult makes their untimely death funny. If your son someday decides to get a tattoo or something and he dies, can I come onto FR and laugh about it with your permission?

[ZULU]

Maybe you're right about the Darwin Award having outlived its novelty.

What makes you think I'm happy some 17 year old kid died of an infection from a piercing?

But I do think getting body parts pierced or tatooed is grotesque, esthetically repugnant, barbaric, un-American and unhealthy. But that's my personal opinion and I'm entitled to it. If you or anyone else wants to get the Star-Spangled Banner engraved on your back complete with pierced grommets and flagstaff go ahead. Its a free country.

[mysterio]

Right on. I agree with your post.

I just reacted negatively when I saw someone gleefully exclaiming "Darwin Award!" especially when it seems like this was a fairly good kid.

[armydoc]

Mrs Anderson said her son had been born with a weak heart but was living a normal life.

She said she had talked to a doctor at the Northern General Hospital and added: "I thought it was something to do with his heart, but he told me Daniel had septicaemia.

Just a guess, but I bet this kid had an abnormal heart valve and was a set-up for endocarditis (infection of the valve) from the inevitable transient bacteremia that a lip piercing involves. It was the endocarditis that killied him. That's why antibiotics are prescribed for people with known valve abnormalities undergoing dental cleaning, colonoscopy, etc.

[JoeBob]

Locum??

Would that be the same as our Nurse Practitioner??

[Protagoras]

Personally, I see nothing stupid or wrong with having a facial piercing.

Ear lobes, with nothing but skin and fat, if done under sterile conditions, present very few potential health problems.

Other parts of the anatomy present different circumstances and risks. Many are impossible to keep clean and prevent a route of entry for infection. Tongues and lips are examples. There are other, shall we say, more private places where that is also true.

Meanwhile, nerves and muscle tissue are also an issue.

This practice has more risks than rewards.

Not to mention it brands the user as an imbecile. Kids are expected to be stupid, but their parents should be ashamed of themselves.

Tattoos are a different subject, a short term mistake with long term consequences.

[shamusotoole]

Could be any one. Nurse Practitioner woulf be the high end of the food chain. Let us hope it was an NP.

[herkbird]

Especially those large diamond nose studs that look like a huge whitehead pimple that is ready to explode, AAARRGGHHH!!!!

Mutilation of the body is for sick people. What are they going to do with huge holes left behind when they finally realize how disgusting they look to normal people.

My sympathies to the deceased young mans parents, what a waste of a human life just so they can be hip with the recent fad. Piercing's leave holes that constantly are full of puss from unsanitary and improper care. Even the majority of pierced ear rings suffer from puss build up due to improper care.

The face contains enough pores that contain puss without the need to make huge holes that can result in death. Stop this Mutilation now, it kills and looks disgusting.

[Jane Austen]

Isn't tongue splitting the latest in-thing? Or has it been replace by implants or something?

[kcvl]

"Tongue and belly button piercings affect the digestive system."




Dying to Get Your Tongue Pierced?


A young woman in Connecticut got her tongue pierced. A couple of days later her tongue became sore and swollen. She also complained of a foul-tasting discharge from the pierced region. The young woman removed the stud from her tongue and the infection healed a few days later.

A month later, she suffered severe headaches, fever, nausea, and vomiting. The young woman was taken to Yale University hospital, where a head scan revealed that she had a brain abscess -- a localized collection of pus -- which physicians had to drain. The young woman recovered after six weeks of intravenous antibiotic treatment.

As reported in New Scientist magazine, Richard Martinello of Yale's medical school said that "this sort of brain abscess is very serious," theorizing that the blood carried enough bacteria from the tongue infection to cause the brain abscess. Although infections from body piercings are relatively common, this is the first brain abscess linked to any piercing. The tongue is particularly vulnerable to infections, Martinello explains, because the mouth is warm, moist, and full of bacteria.





Piercing your tongue? Different locations on the tongue stimulate different points. The center of your tongue stimulates a digestion point.

[NRA1995]

Mutilation of the body is for sick people.

I couldn't agree more

[Spiff]

Darwin Award nominee. What a freakin' moron.

[shamusotoole]

On further study, I may be wrong. In Britain there is an institution called "Locum Tenens". In Latin, I believe it means, "holding in place of".

The following link may she somke light:http://www.studentdoc.com/locum-tenens.html

Could be a new MD or similar.

[ItsForTheChildren]

Don't know how it works in practice, but the definition seems to indicate it would be another doctor, just not the usual one.

"a professional (typically a physician or clergyman) who substitutes temporarily for a peer [from locum tenens]"

[Scoutmaster]

As repugnant as I find piercings, I support the right of someone to be pierced if they are determined (stupid?) enough to do so. If nothing else, it gives you an easy way to identify some of those who exercise bad judgment in following the herd who ironically wants demonstrate their individuality by doing the identical thing all of the other individuality demonstrators are doing.

If most piercing do, in fact, heal over in time if a stud is removed, then they are less a "permanent reminder of a temporary state of mind" than a tattoo.

I also assume that if the appropriate sterilization rules are followed by the piercer and the person pierced does all of the required follow-up swabbing with hydrogen peroxide, then infection is probably a small risk.

That said, several years ago in Atlanta we had a co-ed at prominent private university decide to get her nipples pierced while her wealthy parents were out of the country. One became infected (err . . . one nipple, not one parent) with a particularly virulent staph infection; she required a radical mastectomy just shy of 20 years old. That didn't stop the infection. She ended up brain-dead, on life support until the hospital could locate the parents and obtain permission to cease life support (which the parents fought for several weeks, but that's another story).

[conservatrice]

Disgusting. That is the embodiment of self-hatred.

[IamConservative]

I hesitate to take this "down" a notch, do some googling on the "Prince Albert."

I experience anxiety and chills just thinking about someone else getting one of these.