Posted on 12/13/2001 2:51:50 PM PST by blam
Tongue piercing causes brain abscess
14:41 13 December 01
Jeff Hecht
Parents now have another reason to frown on tongue piercing - a potentially fatal brain abscess suffered by a young woman in Connecticut.
The woman's tongue became sore and swollen two or three days after it was pierced, and she reported a foul-tasting discharge from the pierced region. The infection healed in a few days after she removed the stud from her tongue, but a month later she suffered severe headaches, fever, nausea and vomiting.
A scan at the Yale University hospital revealed the brain abscess, which physicians drained. She recovered after six weeks of intravenous antibiotic treatment.
"This sort of brain abscess is very serious," Richard Martinello of Yale's medical school told New Scientist. Modern medicine can kill the infecting bacteria, but he says "in the past, there was a very high mortality rate."
In the blood
Such brain abscesses are rare, and normally linked to sinus or ear infections. The patient showed no sign of sinus problems, and Martinello said the bacteria that cause the brain abscess "were those typically found in persons' mouths".
The blood commonly picks up some bacteria from infections, but normally the immune system wipes them out. In this case, he thinks the blood carried enough bacteria from the tongue infection to cause the brain abscess.
Infections at the sites of body piercings are relatively common, but this is the first brain abscess linked to any piercing. The tongue is particularly vulnerable to infections because the mouth is warm, moist and full of bacteria.
Martinello says it is important to realise that such infections have the potential to cause dangerous complications.
14:41 13 December 01
Here's one for you...my 18 year daughter, who is 4.0 student, in the National Honor society, and scored 1375 on her SAT's has been campaigning hard for me to let her get her tongue pierced. Never underestimate the power of something "being cool" .
This article gives me more ammo!!
Decorative perhaps, but functional???? For what? Oral sex?
Kids are more likely to die crossing the street or using firearms. Just like liberals you will use anything to justify forcing your belief system on others. It's not right.
I don't see where anyone said we were going to use force to stop you from mutilating yourself. It's just that we think you're a maroon.
Expand upon this please. How are morals involved here? Also, you have not given any evidence for the idiocy of tounge peircing other than your stated opinion. You see, this is not a very good argument. One cannot make blanket statements and expect them to be accepted without supporting evidence, facts, and arguments. Try again.
Yeeeeow! A bit kinky, no?!
If that is what you choose to engage in, I won't try and stop you. I'm going to express my belief system but I don't want you to take it as a personal condemnation of you.
I won't be joining you in the kinky area because I think the behavior reduces sex to recreation and human beings to mere playthings and sex machines. I prefer sex within the confines of matrimony in the communion of love, which focuses on the individual, not the act. I don't think sex should be used as a simple tool of masturbatory and voyeuristic gratification.
And yes, I do indeed have on my asbestos! ;)
I work for a computer software help desk and several years ago one of my coworkers decided to add a tongue barbell to her collection of tattoos. It certainly was decorative and she was quite happy to show all of us her newly acquired infection. Believe me when I say we didn't ask to see this. Functional? Perhaps. Management received no less than twenty complaints from customers who stated she was both difficult to understand and annoying because she constantly clicked her barbell against her teeth and they could hear it.
To each his own but I sure can't understand that choice.
You need more evidence than looking at someone with a spike through their tongue to figure out that is idiotic!?!
I said you lived in a moral utopia because of the subjective way you look at things. Everything is relative to you. I don't subscribe to that way of thinking. Truth exists. And the truth is that sticking a metal spike through your tongue is crazy, even if it IS to enhance your sexual pleasure. Mutilation is mutilation....period.
Actually, everything is not morally relative to me. I do not believe that everything is ok. I personally have a system of morals. There are certain immoralities that everyone can agree on such as murder, rape, and theft. The interesting thing about these particular immoralities is that they affect others and society in a VERY direct and negative manner. For those other actions, that do not directly harm anyone, that are also of a moral debate, how can we know with any real certainty what is and is not moral?
I will go out on a limb and assume your moral compass is the Word of God, the Bible. This is great. As moral compasses go there is none better. However, you nor any other Christian can prove the existance of God in any real objective manner, and if there is no God, then the Bible is nothing much more than babarian fairy tales and myth. Almost every Christian I know does not believe or have faith in a vaccum, but can recount numerous subjective experiences that, at least in their minds, give them their own individual proof. However, these experiences are subjective and also prove nothing in the objective.
I believe there is a real objective truth. There has to be. It is nature of truth that there is only one truth. However, since this particular truth cannot be determined in any accepted objective manner, then we also cannot have a totally objective morality either.
So, here is where the dichotomy comes in. We can all agree on those moral questions that have a direct affect on society and people both negatively and directly. However, for those actions of a moral nature that do not harm or affect society negatively, we should leave those decisions to a person's own conscience because we have no real way to prove one way or the other that they are right or wrong in their actions. Call it moral relativism if you must, but it is liberty at its finest. If this is troubling to you, you can ask God why he gave us free-choice and the natural rights of life, liberty, and property in the first place.
He is an abuser because she wants a pierced tongue?!?! You have succeeded in proving the 'ASSUME' cliche to be true. Idiot.
I take it you are against circumcision as well?
Is a nose-job mutilation?
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Heck, Once I'm King, the tongue piercing will be mandatory for women upon reaching age of consent!
*sigh* Once again you have given nothing to support your side of this argument, other than your expressed opinions. First off, you'll need to prove that God exists, and if He does that He is, in fact, good. We can agree that evil acts are bad, but then you will have to define "evil". You may FEEL that tounge piercing is stupid, and that's fine, but to try and insist toungue piercing is for oral sex only is also something you are going to have to show. For instance what about women who have peirced tongues but do not give oral sex? How about the same for men who have pierced tonges. Also, you'll have to show that oral sex given by someone with a tongue ring is ultmately better, and I will tell you there is no difference. So until you come up some support your inane comments I will no longer take you serious or respond. If you want to debate this, fine, go find some facts, if not, then good day.
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