If you’re ever tempted to catch a butterfly, kill it, mix its remains with water, and then inject water/butterfly goo into your bloodstream, take a step back and consider whether this is really such a good idea.
Tragically, 14-year-old Brazilian teen Davi Nunes Moreira did just this, and now he’s dead. As per a report in the New York Post, Moreira injected butterfly remains into his leg earlier this year. Soon afterwards, he was throwing up and limping, then he was admitted to hospital, then he spent a week in excruciating pain, then his body couldn’t take any more and gave out.
Even now, months later, puzzled doctors still aren’t even sure what killed him, and as this is such a bizarre situation, there’s little precedent for it. Specialist at Hospital Santa Marcelina, Luiz Fernando D. Relvas, has a couple of theories, ranging from an embolism, an infection, an allergic reaction, or some kind of toxin within the butterfly itself. He said:
We don’t know how he prepared this mixture or the size of the fragments he managed to inject into the body. There may have been air left inside, which could lead to an embolism.
A social media challenge gone wrong?
A post-mortem was scheduled, hopefully providing some answers to baffled authorities and an investigation remains open, with a spokesman for the Civil Police in Vitoria da Conquista saying: “The autopsy results will help clarify the cause of death. The investigation is designed to clear up what happened.” But, as far as I can see, the results have not been made public or were inconclusive.
It’s also theorized that this is some kind of social media challenge gone wrong. Whenever a teenager dies in unusual circumstances and makes the news, this kind of theory often rears its head as some kind of moral panic for their parents. Cops are pursuing this angle, though Moreira himself apparently denied it had anything to do with social media before his death.
There is apparently a trend of drawing butterfly designs on your body to post on social media, but it’s a long way from there to injecting a crushed butterfly into your bloodstream. We can only await the results of the investigation on this bizarre case, though my bet is the answer is simple. Bored teens do weird things, whether it’s for social media or not.
Whatever the case, if any other kid is tempted to inject a butterfly into themselves, hopefully, on reading this story, they’ll have second thoughts.
