Man Gets Pork Tapeworm Removed From Eyeball Before It Ate His Brain

A Florida man recently had a brain-eating parasitic pork tapeworm removed from his eyeball that threatened to turn him blind. Sam Cordero initially thought he was seeing a black dot moving from left to right, until he realized the dot was actually a pork tapeworm that had made its home in his left eye. According to Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, "Taenia solium infection (taeniasis) is an intestinal infection with adult tapeworms that follows ingestion of contaminated pork." While a tapeworm might find its way into a human's body when one consumes raw pork or comes in contact with contaminated human feces, it seldom travels through a person's intestines, into one's bloodstream and embed itself in one's brain or eye ball. However, in Cordero's case -- which is one of the 20 recorded cases of tapeworms reaching human eyes in the world -- the insect settled down in his eye's vitreous chamber, which is a fluid filled area behind Cordero's lens and cornea.