London, June 3 (ANI): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US released a statement on Friday saying that there is no cause to fear the walking dead - Zombies.
The announcement was made following a series of disturbing incidents involving cannibalism that have set the internet aflutter with rumours of an impending 'Zombie Apocalypse'.
"CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)," the Daly Mail quoted agency spokesman David Daigle as telling the Huffington Post.
This is not the first time the CDC has addressed zombies. In the past, the government agency has released several tongue-in-cheek warnings about the undead.
Now, however, the CDC decided to weigh in on the zombie question in earnest following a vicious attack that happened in Miami on Saturday, when Rudy Eugene, aged 31, was shot and killed by police while devouring the face of a homeless man.
The victim, 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, survived, but the incident has left his face horribly disfigured.
Eugene, who may have been high on drugs known as 'bath salts' at the time, seemed invulnerable to the bullets piercing his naked body until the moment he collapsed, police said.
On Tuesday, Alexander Kinyua, a 21-year-old student from Maryland, admitted to murdering his roommate, Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, and then eating his heart and parts of his brain.
Now, law enforcement officials are on the hunt for Luka Rocco Magnotta, a porn actor who allegedly killed and dismembered Jun Lin, a Chinese man believed to be his lover, and then raped and ate flesh from the corpse.
He packaged and mailed other body parts to political offices in Ottawa, Canada, the Daily Mail has reported.
The gruesome parade of crimes involving cannibalism has continued with a man in Sweden who allegedly cut off and ate his wife's lips, followed by a story out of New York where a man chewed the ear off another man at a Staten Island restaurant.
It also has been reported that in New Jersey, a man stabbed himself multiple times in front of police and then threw pieces of his skin and intestines at them.
All of the ghoulish crimes of the past week have driven 'Zombie Apocalypse' up to the number 2 spot on Google's list of trending search terms.
The site Gawker has added fuel to the fire by pointing to a "mysterious rash" that broke out at a high school in Hollywood, Florida, as further proof that the walking dead are out there.
The CDC spokesperson dismissed 'fictional viruses' that can cause cannibalism in humans, such as Ataxic Neurodegenrative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, which has been outlined by a Harvard University professor in a fake medical journal.
However, zombie-like characteristics have been observed in the animal kingdom.
A newfound fungus in a Brazilian rain forest, called Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani, is known to infect an ant, take over its brain so as to move the body to a good location for growth, and then kill the host.
The fascination with the idea of corpses coming back to life to feast on the brains of the living is not new. In 1932, Victor Halperin directed 'White Zombie,' where Bela Lugosi played a voodoo master, setting the stage for eight decades of B-list horror films centering on flesh-eating ghouls. (ANI)
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Comments:
Yourface
June 8, 2012 at 6:20 PM
Salvatore Ingrassia
June 3, 2012 at 11:50 PMI have been a huge fan of The Zombie film genre since I saw Night of the Living Dead when I was a child. I still enjoy watching &discussing Zombie related films and tv sbows such as the very popular Walking Dead series on AMC. I consider myself a Zombie expert and can testify that there will never be a walking dead type of epidemic. Dead corpses would eventuall decompse and rigor mortis would render them incapable of ambulation. I do not rule out an epedemic like rabies that would rexemble an infected zombie much like the ones in 28 Weeks &Days Later movies. Those zombies were fast and lethal to say the least. So rest easy citizens and dream pleasant dreams.................
Bull. I say it's a conspiracy. Maybe there won't be any zombies like Dawn of the Dead, but there's a researcher at the CDC that ADMITS he knows that researchers are working on rabies and the flu. And there's something in those "bath salts" that makes people go batshit. Maybe these zombies can't infect people, but they can sure as hell eat them. I'm just sayin. Conspiracy.