The Necrotizing Fasciitis Strep-Containing Bananas Email Warning Is A Hoax

Last significant update: 10 February 2000

This information can be freely reproduced in any medium, as long as the information is unmodified.

Thanks to Judy Kulbicki for first bringing this hoax to our attention, on 2 February 2000, and to Michael Cnudde for supplying us with the version in which this hoax usually appears, which you'll find below, on 3 February 2000.

Well, well. Here is a particularly silly hoax, since it defeats itself right from the start:

Subject: Warning Banana Eater!


       Subject: Passing this on

 This warning bears sending.  Send it to all those people you are concerned
about.  Please forward to everyone you love!!     

That's the first hoax warning sign... the request to propagate it far and wide.

I have checked the source and it is VALIDATED FROM THE CDC. (center for
disease control in atlanta georgia)

BANG! They just shot themselves in the foot. Before the hoax even starts, we have a reputable web site we can check to see whether or not this has any basis in fact. But the Center for Disease Control web site (leaving our site) debunks this in an article titled "False Internet report about necrotizing fasciitis associated with bananas"....

So we can consign this to the dungheap without even reading the hoax -- but for those of you who like to torture yourselves further, read on:

   Warning:

   Several shipments of bananas from Costa Rica have been infected with
necrotizing fasciitis, otherwise known as flesh eating bacteria. Recently this
disease has decimated the monkey population in Costa Rica. We are now just
learning that the disease has been able to graft itself to the skin of fruits
in  the region, most notably the Banana which is Costa Rica's largest export.
Until this  finding scientist were not sure how the infection was being
transmitted.

Hmmm. So now diseases are spreading between Plant and Animal Kingdoms, eh?

   It is advised not to purchase Bananas for the next three weeks as this
is the period of time for which bananas that have been shipped to the US
with the possibility of carrying this disease. If you have eaten a banana
in the last 2-3 days and come down with a fever followed by a skin
infection seek "Medical Attention"!!!

   The skin infection from necrotizing fasciitis is very painful and eats
two to three centimeters of flesh per hour. 

Class, what is wrong with this paragraph? Correct! An infection eats volume, not linear measure.

Amputation is likely, death is possible..

... of the perpetrator of this hoax, if we catch him/her.

Just kidding.

Or am I? You be the judge.

 

   If you are more than an hour from a medical center burning the flesh ahead
of  the infected area is advised to help slow the spread of the infection.
 The FDA  has been reluctant to issue a country wide warning because of fear
nationwide panic. They have secretly admitted that they feel upwards of 15,000
Americans will be affected by this but that these are acceptable numbers.

Hey! I think I finally understand! The people who write hoaxes are conspiracy theorists. That would explain why they are such loons....

   Please forward this to as many people you care about as
possible as we do not feel 15,000 people is an acceptable number.

I say that forwarding this to even ONE person is not an acceptable number.

   Manheim Research Institute

Whodat? Certainly not part of the CDC, nor do they seem to have a web presence. They don't exist -- except in the depraved mind of the hoax writer.

   Center for Disease Control
   Atlanta Georgia

Please do not forward this -- or any other hoax -- to all your friends.

Instead, you should reply to the sender -- and as far back up the email chain as you have energy -- informing the originators that this is a hoax. For this particular hoax, I suggest that you provide a pointer to this URL (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/hoaxes/banana.html)
For virus or hoax info, please see our main page (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/) or go to another reputable site, like The Urban Legends Reference Pages (leaving our site).

   -BPB

visits to this page since 10 February 2000, 17:20 EST