[HN Gopher] The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for ...
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The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
(2017)
Author : thatguy0900
Score : 240 points
Date : 2021-10-16 23:50 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (allthatsinteresting.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (allthatsinteresting.com)
| dang wrote:
| One past thread:
|
| _The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21096062 - Sept 2019 (86
| comments)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Some people get blue skin after exposure to colloidal silver.
| jiahaiqi wrote:
| Therefore, close relatives to marry is a human breeding taboo,
| will greatly increase the probability of genetic diseases in
| infants
| vmception wrote:
| Anyone have better photos, maybe from the 70s onward?
| andai wrote:
| There's some photos of Paul Karason on Google Images, who
| developed the same condition from silver poisoning.
| jeffbee wrote:
| He turned blue from silver poisoning, he did not develop
| methemoglobinemia from it.
| philwelch wrote:
| So did this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Jones
| _(Libertarian_poli...
| supermatt wrote:
| Silver nitrate is a known cause of acquired
| methemoglobinemia.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-
| treatments/argyria-o....
|
| Different conditions. What happens with colloidal silver
| is the buildup of silver oxides in tissues, permanently
| staining them blue.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methemoglobinemia
|
| Maybe that particular family had it much worse but I don't
| think I'd ever see someone with it and think "they're blue."
| Though if it's like poor circulation, it'd looks a bit more
| blue in person.
| choeger wrote:
| These people would be naturals in any star trek show. Finally a
| cheap way to cast more Andorians.
| dougmwne wrote:
| The discovery of the treatment in the methylene blue dye is quite
| fascinating. How exactly did someone figure that out for such a
| rare condition? And imagine being deep blue all your life and
| everyone knowing you as blue, then you take this blue pill and
| bam, you're pink as can be. Must have seemed like practical
| magic.
| folli wrote:
| It's a known cure for Methemoglobinemia:
| https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000562.htm
| Nition wrote:
| The general condition of methemoglobinemia isn't as rare as
| this family's particular genetic condition, so the methylene
| blue treatment was already known. I'm not sure when they first
| discovered that methylene blue can treat methemoglobinemia -
| methylene blue was discovered in 1876, but it does all sorts of
| things.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _And imagine being deep blue all your life and everyone
| knowing you as blue, then you take this blue pill and bam, you
| 're pink as can be. Must have seemed like practical magic._
|
| Almost sounds like homeopathy, without the dilution, that
| actually works.
| xcambar wrote:
| So, not homeopathy?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I get their point, homeopathy has two bs gimmicks. The
| first is to use a substance that causes the ailment as a
| cure, the second is to replace that substance with
| water/sugar and the idea of the substance.
|
| Using a blue substance to cure someone who's blue is
| similar to the first gimmick, but here they actually use
| the substance and medically tested it.
| Scarblac wrote:
| It has _three_ gimmicks, the first is to never look at
| causes, only at symptoms.
|
| Then use a substance that causes the same symptom
| (usually not the ailment, only one of the symptoms), and
| then dilute it away.
|
| So it scores 2 out of 3. But the dilution part is
| important :)
| xcambar wrote:
| For the sake of clarity: I will not stand on the side of
| homeopathy, ever. It's placebo effect marketing rather
| than evidence-based science and hence not worth my money.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I didn't think you did, but valid things can share traits
| with bullshit and still be valid things.
| xcambar wrote:
| This is correct and too often ignored. Bullshit owns
| nothing:)
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| What about when placebo-based medicine offers better
| patient outcomes, for certain disorders? E.g., for sleep
| medicine without side effects? We used homeopathy for my
| daughters car sickness and it worked great.
| xcambar wrote:
| Placebo is very powerful and is actually validated by
| scientific research.
|
| So when the conditions are here, as they seemingly were
| for your daughters, it's great.
|
| Yet, homeopathy, when considered as a potent product,
| didn't help, because it is not potent. The conditions
| enabling the placebo effect did. And no one would
| complain about that :)
|
| The problem arises when homeopathy is sold and marketed
| as potent _per se_.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Did you know stretching before a car trip prevents all
| but the worst car sickness? Both my chiropractor and my
| acupuncturist recommended it and I haven't suffered from
| car sickness since.
|
| There, I saved you the cost of the water pills. You don't
| need costly, potentially dangerous additive laced
| medicine if you're just looking for the placebo effect.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Yeah, but she feels sick in the car. Then we give her a
| pill. There is nothing dangerous in homeopathy, that's
| the dilution effect.
|
| Another thread trending on the value of placebo:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28887705
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >There is nothing dangerous in homeopathy
|
| Some of the pills are made using toxic fillers. It's not
| enough I'd panic over, you can get the placebo effect
| without ingesting anything shady/expensive.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Do you have a source for homeopathy being made from toxic
| filers?
|
| I'd hypothesize that the more expensive the pill, the
| better the effect.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I can't find specifics about homeopathic fillers, but any
| pill not regulated by the FDA is likely to use cheap
| fillers that are often toxic. Vitamins are where you
| commonly hear about this, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Regulation_of_food_and_dietary...
|
| I did find this,
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/fda-homeopathic-
| teet... which shows there is some risk, though again
| you're most likely fine.
|
| >I'd hypothesize that the more expensive the pill, the
| better the effect.
|
| For you, sure. For your daughter, I bet your confident
| recommendation is the most important aspect.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Not really. This isn't like cures like. This is triggering a
| biological system to do something. There is a buildup of a
| substance that he body could break down but doesn't. So you
| do something to trigger the system into action. This is more
| like hydrating someone in order to trigger their kidneys to
| work harder and thereby flush out some other toxin.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Methylene blue was widely used in malaria treatment, and after
| its relative safety was figured out, ease of access meant
| doctors went nuts trying it out on all sorts of conditions. And
| it worked as a treatment for all sorts of things, and was
| issued to soldiers in the field through wwii. It's a MAOI and
| shows up in nootropic stacks and discussions all the time.
|
| Makes you pee blue, can treat effects of carbon monoxide
| poisoning, etc. There were lots of opportunities for someone
| with blue skin to have encountered the stuff.
| et2o wrote:
| Methylene blue has a fascinating history in medicine. It was
| already well known as a treatment for methemoglobinemia
| however. It's a ready electron acceptor. It's used for a few
| other conditions today, without a lot of evidence.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Yves Klein used Methylene blue in the drinks at one of his
| shows to great effect... https://socks-
| studio.com/2019/11/23/iris-clert-yves-klein-th...
| beloch wrote:
| They don't have a family tree... They have a family _ladder_.
| Wow.
| exDM69 wrote:
| Family directed acyclic graph.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Other than the one person marrying their aunt, the closest
| connection I can see is a second cousin marrying, something I
| believe is legal, healthy, and very common in that period. I'd
| bet portions of your family tree from two hundred years ago
| would look similar.
| cperciva wrote:
| Mine certainly does. One quarter of my ancestry comes from an
| area of Lancashire which had three wealthy families -- the
| Cleggs, the Mercers, and the Taylors. Those three families
| intermarried almost exclusively from ca. 1400 until ca. 1850.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| There still is a lot of cousin marriage today, mostly in
| religious pockets that are either small for the region, or
| shrinking rapidly (look at Lebanon or Middle Eastern
| countries.)
|
| In Islam, since the Prophet wanted to marry his close
| relatives, their kinship rules have a couple of weird
| cutout exceptions compared to most uniform rules in other
| religions.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That tree's focused on only one person, Ben Stacy; his
| ancestors. The entire tree sounds a lot more connected:
|
| > However, by the early 1960s, some members of the Fugate
| clan had begun to resent their cobalt-tinted skin. Not only
| did their skin mark them as different, but by that time,
| _people had already begun to associate their skin color with
| the family's history of inbreeding_.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I think if any of us had a visual cue showing our familial
| ties people would also say we had a family history of
| inbreeding.
| User23 wrote:
| It's called pedigree collapse. Your family tree grows
| exponentially to the second power with each generation.
| So a mere 50 generations ago, which is to say roughly
| 1000-1500 years ago, you had 1,125,899,906,842,624 slots
| in your family tree. Needless to say the vast majority of
| those slots don't have a unique person in them.
| adnmcq999 wrote:
| Blue fugate(s) would be a cool name for a band
| huhtenberg wrote:
| As others have already mentioned, in addition to the genetic
| cause of blue skin it can also be caused by an ingestion of
| silver.
|
| There are several well-publicized cases, all of which were self-
| inflicted.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria
| xattt wrote:
| The patho is different. Fugates' skin was due to methemoglobin.
| Argyria is the result of the accumulation of silver
| nanoparticles in body tissues. Argyria is not reversible.
|
| I would imagine the actual hue of the blueness would be
| different.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| This article touches on something that remains very true today:
| if you want to study genetic disorders you look at closely-
| related populations. If the condition you want to study is linked
| to a recessive gene, you want to find (or create) an isolated
| population with that gene.
|
| In animals/plants this is why inbreeding can serve a useful
| function. If you want to detect a recessive gene, but either
| don't have access to genetic testing or are not sure which gene
| is involved, you in-breed until you see individuals who express
| the recessive gene. These individuals inherited the recessive
| gene from both parents. You then know which parental lines carry
| the gene, which lets you select for or against it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Look no further than European Royalty, for example Charles II
| of Spain's family tree ... er, family square, rather.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > inbreeding can serve a useful function
|
| Are there any examples of species doing this 'deliberately'?
| inawarminister wrote:
| Royal consanguinity marriages in old Europe. And many other
| places as well. Sibling marriages in Egypt and the Diadochi!
| xhevahir wrote:
| Ancient Ireland, too:
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2246227-stone-age-
| rulin...
| rndgermandude wrote:
| If I remember correctly, certain types fruit flies prefer
| inbreeding.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Have you heard about the Fugate family from Kentucky?
| gilrain wrote:
| Many, many species of plants are inbreeders. In the plant
| world, inbreeding and outbreeding seem to both be successful
| techniques with their own benefits and drawbacks.
| loonster wrote:
| When they do it deliberately with cattle they call it line
| breeding.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Many show breed dog pedigrees have lots of ancestors, many
| of them the same dog.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Some oxiditation (1%) of Hb (Fe 2+) to metHb (Fe 3+) is normal,
| it gets reduced back by the enzyme Cytochrome b5 reductase. So
| far so good.
|
| But since metHb is dysfunctional and cannot bind oxygen and you
| need levels of at least 10% metHb to be visible as cyanosis: Why
| didn't they exhibit oxygen-deficit related symptoms?
|
| Or can your body compensate with other mechanism if it's
| congenital? At least when it is visibly induced you most
| certainly will also suffer from symptoms like shortness of breath
| etc.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methemoglobinemia
|
| It would seem you are correct but these effects weren't touched
| on by the article.
| prvc wrote:
| >Though today Benjy and most of the Fugate family descendants
| have lost their blue coloring, the tint still comes out in their
| skin when they are cold or flush with anger.
|
| I wish they had included at least one photograph of this.
| sam345 wrote:
| https://allthatsinteresting.com/fugate-family-blue-people-of...
| thinkloop wrote:
| https://s.abcnews.com/images/Health/abc_blue_man_thg_130925_...
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| That's argyria from taking colloidal silver.
|
| Methemoglobinemia looks far less severe:
| https://blogs.brown.edu/emergency-medicine-
| residency/citw-14...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fugates+blue+skin&t=h_&iax=images&...
| silisili wrote:
| I went to college in Kentucky with two of the Fugates, twins in
| fact. Sorry to report, neither were blue in color.
| diggan wrote:
| Makes sense, seems like in the 1960s they came up with a
| solution for removing the blue color, so most likely if they
| have the recessive gene, they are taking those pills.
|
| > Using research collected from studies of isolated Alaskan
| Eskimo populations, Cawein was able to conclude that the
| Fugates carried a rare hereditary blood disorder that causes
| excessive levels of methemoglobin in their blood.
|
| > Cawein devised a cure for this disorder: more blue.
| Counterintuitively, the best chemical for activating the
| body's process of turning methemoglobin to hemoglobin is
| methylene blue dye. The Fugates he treated ingested this dye
| and within a few minutes, the blue coloration of their skin
| disappeared, and their skin turned pink.
|
| > As long as they kept ingesting pills of the substance
| regularly, these blue people of Kentucky could live their
| lives normally.
| silisili wrote:
| Very well could be. I'd never heard of it at the time I
| knew them, so didn't know to look or even ask.
|
| I can't confirm they are direct lineage or anything,
| though. I only know they were Fugate from eastern KY. It's
| not a particularly common name, nor is eastern KY
| particularly well populated so figure they are related in
| some manner.
| [deleted]
| shoto_io wrote:
| If you Google the last name you'll find some pictures
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| I think those are black and white with false colour
| colordrops wrote:
| They do, toward the end of the article.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| He does not look blue.
| colordrops wrote:
| He doesn't look too blue at all, that is true. They say
| that most of the color faded as he got older. If you look
| closely you can see a tinge of blue on his face.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| Same. In fact the obvious question in the absence of
| photographs is how blue they really were.
| slim wrote:
| search for methemoglobinemia
| Something1234 wrote:
| Not to be insensitive, but it would have been interesting if they
| had a member of the family play an Andorian in Star Trek. Think
| about it.
| ars wrote:
| It's more of a gray-ish blue, not bright blue like those
| characters.
| codeisawesome wrote:
| Or Kree in MCU!
| [deleted]
| superjan wrote:
| Comically, the author used a stock image to explain how recessive
| genes work, where the unaffected individual is blue, and the
| affected is red. It serves more to confuse than explain.
| imglorp wrote:
| Maybe the old term for European aristocrat, blue blood, along
| with its inbreeding connotations, is more literal than history
| gives it credence. It's usually attributed to pale skin but
| perhaps methemoglobinemia was on display.
|
| https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/why-people-nobl...
| Bayart wrote:
| If people had been quite literally blue, it would have been
| widely written about. You're talking about an era giving people
| nicknames based on their countenance and using any slight
| deformity for propaganda was quite common.
| imglorp wrote:
| True. Or maybe they covered it up with cosmetics, another
| stereotype of aristocrats?
| msrenee wrote:
| No.
| nsonha wrote:
| Now I wonder if the blue skined gods of hinduism are based on
| real people
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That's from _Datura metel_
| danschumann wrote:
| Cool so can we edit our genes to express our inner smurf?
| folli wrote:
| You don't need gene editing, a bit of Nitrobenzene will do:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33510533/
|
| Note: do not do this!
| vilaca wrote:
| The true "Indigo Children". Sorry to resurrect that early 2000's
| meme.
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