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Real-Life 'Twilight' Saga: Teens Sucking Each Other's Blood
Filed under: News, In The News, Weird But True, Teen Culture, Health & Safety: Teens, Behavior: Teens, New In Pop Culture
Bella and Edward wannabe couples are all about love bites. Credit: Karunpillai, Summit Entertainment
Inspired by the "Twilight" series and heartthrob vampire Edward Cullen's chilly charms, teens are taking their love nips a little too far, MSNBC reports, biting each other -- hard -- and then licking the blood.
Bizarre teen behavior has horrified parents for generations, but health officials and other experts are warning this vampire-inspired Count Dracula fad could have serious consequences.
"These are kids who think they are real vampires," Dr. Orly Avitzur, the medical advisor to Consumers Union, the agency that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, tells MSNBC.
And many teens are getting their blood-sucking fix on the Internet, Avitzur says, noting that sessions spent trolling vampire-related teen websites are on the rise. Groups such as "I drink blood," a category at experienceproject.com, and "I want to be a vampire" at the site 43things.com, are filled with apparent posts from young people with a yearning for hemoglobin.
"Having that thick, warm copper-tasting blood in my mouth is the best thing I can think of!" writes a teenager identified as "GothicGirl10" on MSNBC. "Sometimes my boyfriend lets me feed off him. I let him feed off me as well."
Such talk alarms medical experts, who warn about the dangers of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis and HIV, as well as the risk of nasty infections. Typically, 10-15 percent of human bite wounds become infected, MSNBC reports.
"If you break the skin, your mouth is pretty dirty," Dr. Thomas Abshire, a pediatric blood and cancer specialist and spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, tells MSNBC. "The human mouth flora is dirtier than a dog or cat's."
Also concerning is the fact that this biting is often done to brand another person, experts say.
"If you think about it, there is such glamorization in those teen vampire movies, they make it seem so sexy and appealing and intriguing," Avitzur says. "It's all mixed up with passion."
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ReaderComments (Page 2 of 5)
9-28-2010 @ 11:21AM
JudeThom said...Brilliant, suck somebody else's blood, and suck in all their diseases like Hep C, HIV, etc. Brilliant. Maybe it will reduce the teenage population.
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9-28-2010 @ 5:15PM
smarter than this said...yeah there are going to be some lovely darwin awards this time around... its just too bad it has to happen to such young people. what a shame that people can't tell the difference between good decisons and bad decisons...
9-28-2010 @ 11:23AM
Scott said...This clown is talking about the difference be tween "real" and "fake" vampires. Hey Einstien, they are all fake. Vampires are from the pretend world. People who really drink blood are not vampires. They Kook-Asses. If they get HIV or Heppatitus, then let them die becasue they are too stupid to live.
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9-28-2010 @ 1:13PM
Elijah said...Scott, I'm pretty sure this is too much for you to tackle. My descriptions of 'real' and 'fake' really don't apply to your blatant name calling and ignorance. Still not sure what your point is, other than to applaud yourself for being able to post a worthless and insulting comment. But I thank you for calling me 'Einstein', though it would have been more effective if you had spelled the name correctly.
9-28-2010 @ 11:32AM
rockpriest said...WELL, you can thank hollywood for this insanity......after all these years of vamp movies, it finally was emulated in real life......very sad
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9-28-2010 @ 11:52AM
Marti said...Rockpriest: You can't blame Hollywood. There has to be some individual, personal responsibility. If we blame Hollywood, we free ourselves from accepting the consequences of our own actions. "It's not *my* fault! The movie made me do it!" Without accepting the fact that our actions carry repercussions, we are liberated to act however we wish. Blaming movies, books, video games, etc doesn't do anything but perpetuate such foolish behavior. Make individuals responsible for what they do, don't give them an avenue of escape.
Any sane, reasoning person should be able to watch a vampire movie, know it isn't real, and walk away without the desire to bite a neck and drink some blood. Anyone who can't do this is... well... not sane or stable in any way, and should probably get some psychiatric help.
9-28-2010 @ 12:44PM
CTG said...Hey, nobody makes anyone watch what comes out of Hollywood. The next step is, you can thank the parents for letting these impressionable kids go and watch vampire shows. Hollywood is only a reflection of our society, not the other way around.
9-28-2010 @ 1:10PM
Ana said..."Any sane, reasoning person should be able to watch a vampire movie, know it isn't real, and walk away without the desire to bite a neck and drink some blood."
Good point, Marti. Any sane person *should* be able to destinguish between fantasy and reality and you can't lay the blame on Hollywood for putting vampire related media out there. Watching monster movies doen't make you behave like a monster, that's a choice.
"You can thank the parents for letting these impressionable kids go and watch vampire shows."
I don't agree. Yes, parents should absolutely moderate what their children view/read/etc., but you can't blame them for everything that goes wrong. The blame lies with the people, teens or adults, who are doing this, not with the media or their parents--unless the parents actually raised these teens to think that they're vampires, that is. Then you can blame them.
9-28-2010 @ 11:41AM
Pks29733 said...Now I know why we are known as the 'American Idiots' overseas!! WHERE is the PARENTING? The parents aren't supervising thier children.
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9-28-2010 @ 6:55PM
jspaggs said...So is this an actual epidemic, or is it just one of those "trends" the media creates so it can sell ad space? None of the so-called experts on the subject mentions any rough estimate of how many teens are involved or mentions that not everyone who may be visiting these sites may not be a teen, or the possibility that the posts on these sites could be teens trying to bs each other?
When I was growing up, thee were a number of "alarming trends" among teens, including devil worship. What a load of crap. A news story exposing this "trend" probably generates more interest among teens than would have been generated had it remained unreported.
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9-28-2010 @ 11:44AM
La'Arn said...G R O S S
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9-28-2010 @ 11:51AM
tuefull said...this doesnt suprise me, in my day,, it was yo yo's , smoke a little skunk weed, then go to class. after school try to find a party for the weekend. now, who knows, one thing, id rather have my kid have sex with one of his teachers, than become a freak vampire. where are the parents?
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9-28-2010 @ 11:54AM
RPage said...That has got to be the grossest thing. Just thinking about something like that makes my stomach squeazy
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9-28-2010 @ 11:55AM
tennwilliams said...just when I thought kids couldn't be any dumber.
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9-28-2010 @ 12:09PM
tiffanie said...I can't imagine a teen dumb enough to participate in such an activity- hell, I was as rebellious as any other troubled teenager at the age not so long ago, but even I wouldn't have done something so stupid. What happened to just smoking some weed?
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9-28-2010 @ 1:22PM
Ana said...I don't think that drugs are the answer to this problem.
What kids need today is the same thing they've always needed. Not more idle amusement, they need to focus on eternity. If they only realized how fleeting this life is and that at the end of it we'll all be held accountable for our actions or inactions this kind of thing wouldn't happen.
9-28-2010 @ 12:39PM
PatrickPain said...Educate them on disease and then beat their ass!
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9-28-2010 @ 12:06PM
Horseman420 said...Just another way to spread AIDS amongst the teens..
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9-29-2010 @ 11:52PM
freedomlife said...It's just another teen trend that will eventually fade away. Here's a trend that won't, financial independance. Check it out at www.mpbtoday.com/freedomlife2010
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9-28-2010 @ 12:18PM
Holly said...Ok, I admit that I met my husband of 14 years when we were working in a haunted house. I also admit telling him when he looked as good as he did, he could bite my neck anytime. However, blood was never an issue. There's a big difference between playing around getting your neck nibbled on by your boyfriend and exchanging bodily fluids that can lead to icky diseases. If I ever caught my daughter engaging in that kind of crap, I would raise all kinds of hell. I read all the Anne Rice books as a teenager, but the idea of real blood just squickied the heck out of me. Are we raising children so stupid that they can't separate fiction from real life?
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