Following swiftly on the heels of my last post, CNN this morning ran an online story about a terrifying new disease. The article was placed at the top of the right hand column, a position normally reserved for news that’s a hair less urgent than Putin making a nuclear threat or Taylor Swift dating that football player. In other words, CNN sees it as Big Big News. Just not Big Big Big News.
So, what’s this horrifying malady we all have to cry ourselves to sleep over now?
It’s called auto-brewery syndrome, as you can see by the headline. Apparently, if you have it all the carbohydrates you ingest in a normal day ferment within you, just the way vintners ferment grapes or brewers ferment hops or whatever the hell they make beer out of these days. Acc’d’g to Wikipedia, the thing is also called gut fermentation syndrome, endogenous ethanol fermentation, or drunkenness disease.
Also, if you have it, you’re in peril of failing a blood-alcohol road test even if you haven’t had a pop in days, weeks, or months. Years, even. That can be a tad annoying should a state trooper pull you over and make you blow. For pity’s sake you could lose your license for two full years in the state of Indiana for a first offense.
You think there’s scads of grown men on those little putt-putt scooters on SR 46 now? (Indiana allows people convicted of DUI to motor down even 55-mph roadways w/o a drivers license — a state law only marginally less absurd than open carry.) Just wait until all the jillions of folks nailed simply because their bellies are the equivalent of wine vats.
A person suffering auto-brewery syndrome, essentially, can be denied driving privileges or even jailed in certain circumstances simply for eating buttered toast in the morning.
Thank god in heaven CNN’s editors and reporters are hot on this story. How much of our innocent population is at risk? A fifth? A third? More than half?
Turns out — again, acc’d’g to Wikipedia — there’ve been four reported cases since 2001. Add to that one case of urinary fermentation wherein the sufferer peed a positive alcohol test.
So five. Five goddamned people have had this disorder in the entire 21st century. Five.
Okay, maybe six, since this woman mentioned on the CNN website today isn’t included in Wikipedia’s case studies.
So, six.
Six out of 336,526,049 people, this holy land’s population per the US Census Bureau (when you go there via the link, you’ll see a different figure as the total is constantly rising). That is one in every 56,087,674.8 Americans, using this AM’s figures.
Does that even merit a mention on one of this nation’s premier news outlets?
Is it worth scaring the crap out of at least a certain percentage of readers and viewers?
I guarantee a significant few folks are, as we speak, fretting over whether or not they have this illness. Okay, they may be neurotics, sure, but does CNN need to push their buttons?
I said it the other day and I’ll say it again: Please stop tring to scare the hell out of us!
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What bizarre misconceptions did you have as a child? I had a whole basket-full of them. Here’s one:
I taught myself how to read by thumbing through the World Book Encyclopedia. I was fascinated by the volume that showed a cut-away view of the Earth (probably in the E volume, one of the thinner tomes — the C volume was huge as was the M; it took me a couple of years to work my way up to those challenges).
Anyway, I learned that the very thin layer upon which we walk and drive is called the Earth’s crust. I started seeing the Earth as analogous to a loaf of Ma’s homemade bread.
Ma’s Homemade Bread Was Crusty, Too.
Then one day, I saw workers jackhammer a big hole into the pavement on Natchez Avenue, our street. The concrete looked to be about six or so inches thick. Below it was a seemingly endless depth of mud or clay. Naturally, I assumed the concrete was the Earth’s crust and that wherever there wasn’t pavement or concrete, other workers had already broken up and hauled away so much of the Earth’s crust.
Therefore, our backyard was the bared layer (the mantle, as I’d learn when I finally got around to that M volume) that exists below the crust. Our front yard too. The Earth, I concluded, in its natural state was covered with a six-inch layer of concrete. Dirt or lawn or whatever was an unnatural state made by workers with jackhammers.
Hey, I was a city kid; whaddya want from me?