Slug Boy disappears leaving no trail, but a few red faces in his wake?

Those old enough to remember when evening newspapers were still part of the social fabric will fondly recall those rather improbable fillers in the righthand column of the page.

These snippets often recycled urban myths as news for Australian readers, who were still many decades away from the 24 hour news cycle and Internet access which hopefully has led to an increasing sophistication when assessing what the mainstream media has on offer.

However, it seems that urban myths and hoaxes continue to find their way into print.

The latest media report to exhibit signs that journalists have been the victims of a classic Australian leg pull was a report which ran last Wednesday that; The ABC has been told that a 21-year-old caught rat lungworm disease after he ate a slug as a dare some time ago.

On the basis of the original media reports the NSW Health media unit issued this media release on Thursday:

NSW Health is warning people of the dangers of eating raw slugs, which although extremely rare, can cause meningitis.
Animals, including slugs and snails, can carry a range of infections, including bacteria, virus and parasites that may infect people. One parasite (or worm) carried by slugs and snails is Angiostrongylus (also called rat lung worm). The adult form of the worm is found only in rodents, and infected rodents pass larvae in their faeces which snails and slugs can eat, getting infected.
NSW Health understands that there may be a suspected case in NSW of rat lung worm, however as this is not a notifiable disease and for privacy reasons is unable to provide further details.

A spokesperson was also on radio talking about this rare condition which had allegedly seen the young man hospitalised for a month.

By then media was also online asking for more details from the general public; Do you know more? Text 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764), email us at scoop@smh.com.au or direct message on Twitter @smh_news.

The story was posted on Digg and by Friday was up on Twitter with b3ta_links repeating that: Some Australians Aren't Terribly Bright: Man eats slug for a dare. Now critically ill in hospital.

On Saturday morning it was starting to unravel, as Caroline Overington writing in The Australian suggested that all may not be as it seems because no-one could find the man who was the subject of the original story and NSW Health apparently admitted that it knew nothing more than what journalists had told it; We got calls about it from the media and we responded to that," a spokeswoman said.

If this story is a hoax, I wonder if the mischief maker got his or her inspiration from the ABC's News In Science webpage on 20 October 2003 which also reported a man eating two slugs for a dare and developing the very same medical condition in Man's brain infected by eating slugs:

Whatever the case this story is off and running - Google's search engine had man eats slug indexed over 2,000 times and by Saturday morning most of these references were to the Australian story.

Image from TNT Magazine