WARNING: Gross stuff ahead.
Late-night programming at Dragon Con is where squeamish boundaries are pushed, and the Science Track’s most unapologetically graphic tradition did not disappoint. On Friday at 10PM, fans packed the Hilton 209–211 for “Science is Gross (Vol. 3): Into the Gross,” moderated by Science Track director Matthew Jarrett. The panel featured forensic entomologist Brandon H. Strauss, clinical microbiologist Kathleen Peters, marine microbiologist Joe Hansen, and veterinary pathologist Dr. Kali Holder for an unflinching look at nature’s most gruesome biological hazards. The panel began with an extended trigger warning by Jarrett to ensure everyone in the audience knew that the panelists would be showing and discussing extremely gruesome topics not for the faint of heart. While this article won’t show any of the images, the presentations will be described.
Hansen led off the presentations by detailing the grim reality of marine pathogens and zoonotic diseases. He showed dolphins suffering from freshwater lesions, where ruptured skin cells invite aggressive fungal blooms, and diamond skin disease (Erysipelothrix), a pig-borne bacterium washed into runoff that cuts off blood supply to tissue in cutaneous infarcts. Human hazards proved just as severe. “Seal finger,” which the patient contracted from boiling a marine mammal skull and had a cut on their finger which got infected. Another patient suffered from antibiotic-resistant “fish fancier’s finger” (Mycobacterium). The patient suffered for seven months before doctors were able to identify the bacterium, which led to another seven months of treatment.
Holder followed with a visual journey through wildlife pathology, dissecting the staggering parasite loads found in ordinary animals. She displayed a raccoon’s lungs infested with writhing black worms, followed by a jaundiced red fox suffering from hemolytic anemia, distemper, and whose stomach was also packed with roundworms.
“Roundworm is a funny term because most worms are round,” Holder noted, showing how the host’s stomach churned out mucus, which is a standard immune response to something invasive. The roundworms, however, remain unharmed behind their protective cuticles. Holder also made a plea to the audience to get their measles vaccine both for themselves and their children. She noted that measles, beyond the normal effects on the body, has the ability to “unvaccinate” you for other things.
From pumpkinseed sunfish carrying larval worms longer than their own bodies to nasal fly larvae bristling with gripping spines inside white-tailed deer nostrils, Holder illustrated a relentless parasitic cycle. She closed with northern water snakes riddled with crustacean pentastomes resembling udon noodles In another example, she found the parasite inside the organs of someone’s pet dog that ate a reptile. When an audience member asked if the parasite is treatable in pets, Holder initially said no, before caveating that normal Frontline treatment that pet users give to prevent fleas and ticks might help if caught early.
Peters shifted the focus to the clinical laboratory, walking through the nightmare of necrotizing fasciitis. Handling thousands of overnight medical samples to guide urgent treatments, Peters warned against Type III marine necrotizing infections caused by Vibrio and Clostridium species currently breaking out of Louisiana. When someone asked what it smells like, Peters described it as “Goopy death.”
Accompanied by slides so graphic that design software Canva blocked them from being uploaded, Peters described how an infection acquired from raw shellfish or swimming with an open wound quickly escalates from blistering to full-blown tissue liquidation and organ failure.
She recounted another incident of walking into her lab after a work trip and one of her personnel notified her that an entire amputated human leg was in her walk-in freezer that wasn’t there five minutes ago. After some investigating, they discover that the owner of the amputated leg, which had been removed several months prior, had requested the leg back. However, every time the leg got returned to the hospital, they sent it back to the lab, assuming a mistake had been made because who would want an amputated leg back?
Strauss concluded the panel with the harrowing history and modern resurgence of the New World screwworm, an obligate parasite appropriately nicknamed the “pretty man eater.” Unlike facultative flies that feast on dead tissue, screwworm maggots aggressively devour living flesh, burrowing deep into open cuts, tick bites, or mucous membranes and killing hosts within 7 to 14 days. Strauss recounted its 1858 discovery on Devil’s Island, where maggots chewed through prisoners’ facial bones into the brain, as well as the 1930s cattle crises that spurred the invention of the sterile insect technique to push the fly south past the Darién Gap in South America. Recent funding cuts in 2024 weakened vigilance, and Strauss highlighted alarming new outbreaks: a human case in Costa Rica requiring manual extraction of over 160 spiny larvae from a patient’s feet, and more found inside the leg during surgery, followed by fresh threats emerging in cattle in West Texas. Since the outbreak discovery in Texas, funding has been reallocated to entomologists to push the parasite back south of Darién Gap. Right now Strauss is hopeful things are contained, but indicated we won’t know for sure until next year.
During audience questions, the panel reinforced practical precautions. All commercial sushi in the U.S. is frozen precisely to kill wild fish worms, bug-infested wounds should never be treated with home remedies because those are ineffective and may just drive maggots deeper into tissue, and open wounds should stay far away from natural waterways. Packed with dark humor, intense visuals, and real-world science, the session proved that reality is always grosser than fiction.
