Free Republic

A type of flesh-eating bacteria has killed four people in Florida so far this year. The state’s health department confirmed the deaths in a notice posted on the Florida Health website. A total of 11 people have contracted the bacteria in 2025, according to the same source. Vibrio vulnificus is part of a wider group of Vibrio bacteria, which are found in coastal waters, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states. This specific bacterium, Vibrio vulnificus, typically lives in warm, brackish seawater, and can enter open wounds when people are swimming. Another potential source of infection is...

Those sweet shellfish may be tempting, but eating oysters in Florida has been dangerous this year. Oysters have sickened people in the Sunshine State with three different types of illnesses, at least one of them deadly. Federal officials issued a warning recently for raw oysters harvested in Galveston Bay, Texas, and sold in Florida, along with seven other states. The oysters were potentially contaminated with norovirus and sold to restaurants and retailers. About 211 people were infected by the oysters and had diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain within 12 to 48 hours after eating them. Publix Supermarkets said it sold...

DOES Louisiana hot sauce, a principal ingredient in the spicy New Orleans cocktail sauce commonly served with raw shellfish, kill certain bacteria found in raw oysters? The answer is yes, at least in the laboratory, researchers said in a preliminary report at a national scientific meeting on microbes and antibiotics yesterday. Principal ingredients of the traditional New Orleans cocktail sauce were found to kill a rare but sometimes fatal bacteria called Vibrio vulnificus. Dr. Sanders said that he saw his first case of V. vulnificus infection 10 years ago and that his interest in studying the sauces arose from lectures...

A young boy was rushed to the hospital after he contracted a flesh-eating bacteria at a Maryland beach. Brittany Carey shared two graphic images of her son's leg where the bacteria began eating away at his flesh in three spots. Carey said in a Facebook post on Saturday that her parents had taken her son out for a beach day off the coast of Ocean City on June 23. She wrote that her son had a great time swimming until June 24 when she 'started noticing little spots developing all over his body'. 'Tuesday morning there were open wounds developing...

If sharks and sunburns don’t scare you at the beach, perhaps this will: Most species of Vibrio are essentially harmless, but some are responsible for diseases like cholera, or can rarely cause flesh-eating skin infections, especially in people with weakened immune systems... But presuming it holds up, the study could help explain a well-supported pattern—beachgoers who swim in the ocean are more likely to get sick with stomach aches or ear infections soon after than those who stay on the sand. And though the bulk of the blame can be tossed on the germs (often from poop) that get into...

Back in September, Texas residents Vicki Bergquist and wife Jeanette LeBlanc were visiting family in Louisiana. They went crabbing with friends and family on the coast, picking up a sack of raw oysters in a market in Westwego. It wasn't long after when LeBlanc's health rapidly declined, CBS affiliate KLFY-TV reports. The couple's friend Karen Bowers says she and LeBlanc shucked and ate about two dozen raw oysters. "About 36 hours later she started having extreme respiratory distress, had a rash on her legs and everything," Bergquist said. "An allergic reaction of sorts, that's what I would call it. That's...

Back in September, Texas residents Vicki Bergquist and wife Jeanette LeBlanc were visiting family in Louisiana. They went crabbing with friends and family on the coast, picking up a sack of raw oysters in a market in Westwego. It wasn't long after when LeBlanc's health rapidly declined, CBS affiliate KLFY reports. The couple's friend Karen Bowers says she and LeBlanc shucked and ate about two dozen raw oysters. "About 36 hours later she started having extreme respiratory distress, had a rash on her legs and everything," Bergquist said. "An allergic reaction of sorts, that's what I would call it. That's...

A Nacogdoches man was in critical but stable condition after three surgeries aimed at saving him from a flesh-eating bacteria that infected him during a swim off the coast of Galveston County. Steve Gilpatrick, 58, was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a tissue-destroying disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus, when he took ill three days after swimming during a July 8 fishing trip at Crystal Beach. Gilpatrick's physician, Dr. David Herndon, the chief of burn services and professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said Tuesday the situation is life-threatening because the infection spread...