Michel Lotito

From BioSciFiWiki

Monsieur Mangetout posing in front of various objects he has eaten. http://www.linternaute.com/humour/magazine/photo/guinness-book-2008/image/repas-plus-bizarre-261408.jpg

Introduction

Michel Lotito (June 15, 1950 - June 25, 2007)[1], born in Grenoble, France, has the ability to eat and digest objects that are usually poisonous or physically dangerous for people to swallow. Called Monsieur Mangetout, or Mr. Eats Everything in English, Lotito has eaten everything from a Cessna 150 plane to a wooden coffin.

Eating His Way to Fame

At some point in their childhood, most people try to eat something they are not supposed to. Whether it was harmless as harmless as sand or as dangerous as a nail, hopefully an adult was there to take the object away. Otherwise, a trip to the emergency room was in order. Luckily for Michel Lotito, when he experimented with swallowing small bits of glass, metal, and rubber around the age of nine he did not require an urgent drive to the doctor. Instead, he found that he was capable of both swallowing these objects without any harm to himself and also of digesting them. Lotito was even capable of digesting poisonous materials that would seriously harm or kill most people.

Quick to use this peculiar ability, Lotito began to publicly eat "undigestibles." He has eaten bicycles, shopping carts, a chandelier, and various small objects from razor blades to knitting needles. He gained the Guiness World record for Strangest Diet [2] after eating a plane. Eating the whole plane took him two years, from 1978 to 1980. Guiness cites him as being able to digest two pounds, or 900grams, of metal a day.

Lotito's method for eating all of this metal is to break it in to small pieces before attempting to eat it. He then drinks mineral oil and continues to drink water while swallowing the metal bits. This acts as a lubricant to help the metal slide down his throat. [3] He also has no problem "passing" his unusual diet. With Lotito's special precautions (keeping his throat lubricated and breaking his "meals" into small pieces), his body treats these usually lethal and dangerous objects like any normal food.

Lotito bites the propeller of the Cessna 150. http://www.studentet.info/modules/ipboard/uploads/post-19-1216581354.jpg

The Mutation

Michel Lotito's stomach and intestinal lining are twice as thick as the normal persons. His digestive juices are particularly acute, helping him to process his special diet (although they do not break down all of the metal -- X-rays have shown a chain and bits of metal still in his stomach).

Although scientists were not quite sure of the specifics, his doubly thick stomach lining developed in his mother's womb. This means that his mutation is not hereditary, but developed because of either environmental effects such as radiation or because his DNA translated incorrectly when it was being copied.

Unfortunately, because of his mutation, Lotito has problems with soft food like bananas. Even though he can swallow amazing amounts of metal and even process poisonous materials found in televisions, his gut has trouble dealing with softer foods that most humans are well equipped to digest.

Scientists Discover Cause

In 2050, scientists working for a government biomedical research group discovered the exact cause of Lotito's mutation. Using PCR -- a method of producing identical DNA from a small strand through a process of extreme heating and coooling -- on DNA saved from Lotito's body after his death, they were able to identify the point mutation that caused the thickening of his stomach lining. It was hypothesized that Lotito's genes must have coded incorrectly while being copied during his early development in the womb, but there was no definite way of proving this so long after his death.

Scientists nick named the mutation the Iron Stomach trait. A public report was published on April 15, 2050 detailing precisely how the government scientists conducted their research and the exact location of the mutation in Lotito's DNA sequence.

Competition

Following the discovery, two bioengineering firms, GenInc and Future Tec, began to investigate ways to bring the Iron Stomach trait to the public. With still five years to go until the overhaul of bioengineering regulations (beginning with the Brown-Ito Act which mandated full disclosure of bioengineering test results to the public and the creation of the Genetic and Morphological Change Administration), both companies worked secretly and continuously tried to undermine each other in an attempt to corner the market.

Three months after research began, GenInc successfully spliced the mutated Iron Stomach DNA sequence in to the normal DNA sequence of a mouse. The researchers, using an adenovirus, inserted the new DNA sequence in to a series of mice. They then fed the mice very small pieces of a metal rod. X-rays and scans proved that the mice's internal organs were not harmed and stool examination showed that the metal rod was not intact, implying that the strong digestive juices that helped Lotito digest metal must be linked to doubly thick stomach lining. Researchers from GenInc then began to feed the mice progressively larger metal rods (always dulling the edges to prevent tearing of the esophagus). The mice still escaped unscathed, and GenInc began to market the Iron Stomach trait.

2050 was the very height of the body enhancing fad and competitive eaters, Lotito enthusiasts, and politicians and famous people from around the world were quick to visit GenInc clinics for gene therapy. The competitive eaters hoped to keep ahead of the curve, assuming that the new wave in competitive eating -- made possible by body enhancement -- would be in strange substances. Politicians and royalty worldwide saw potential in the possible resistance to poisonous substances the Iron Stomach trait conferred. They would no longer have to worry about death threats to poison their food.

However, the negative side effect of the Iron Stomach trait began to rear its painful head. It began with Alice Newsman, a thirty year old competitive eater, who complained that the banana cream pies she consumed for a contest were causing acute stomach pain. Soon more newly enhanced people began to complain of stomach pain whenever they ate soft foods. GenInc was quickly blamed and, once the media grabbed hold of the story, the company began to look for a way to fix the problem.

Future Tec, meanwhile, took the opportunity to offer up their slightly different product. They had created a sort of sac of artificial human skin that would sit outside the body and excrete digestive juices into the abdomen when a user pushed a pump. These digestive juices were engineered to be almost genetically identical to those of the Iron Stomach. The sac was small and easy to hide under clothes, a sign of the soon to come fixation on sleek and invisible bodily improvement in 2052.

The market was smaller this time, because most people who had wanted an enhancement for the Iron Stomach trait had either already had the GenInc therapy or were skeptical because of the widespread complaints. This turned out to be a good thing, because after just a few uses, the digestive juices secreted by the sac began to burn holes in the linings of users stomachs, causing serious ulcers. The thick stomach lining of the Iron Stomach trait was essential to keeping the stomach and intestines safe from this acidic power. Without the safeguard of a thicker stomach, users demanded that Future Tec remove the sacs from their sides. Future Tec suffered a massive drop in stock prices and even worse press than GenInc.

Hoping to make a come back, both companies went back to the drawing board. After years of research and sabotage (GenInc went so far as to plant spies in Future Tec’s laboratories), Future Tec emerged with a new prototype that combined both unsuccessful products.

The new process was to remove the patient’s appendix and replace it with a sac very similar to their previous product. However, this new sac had the ability to produce strong, Iron Stomach digestive juices. To counter the previous problem’s with the previous sac, Future Tec’s prototype would automatically pump into the digestive tract until the level was high enough to be dangerous to the patient. It would then close off and stop producing digestive juices.

Future Tec began to hold trials with mice, like GenInc had the year before. At first, the mice developed ulcers after repeated usage of the sac. But after some fine tuning, Future Tec was able to decrease the danger so much that the risk was almost negligible. However, to avoid backlash and to insure their consumers were safe, they paid GenInc for the right to use their method of gene therapy (which GenInc had patented) to insert the Iron Stomach trait in to patients’ DNA.

Future Tec created mice with the Iron Stomach trait and tested them against mice that had an artificially thickened digestive lining. Eventually, Future Tec had a workable solution to the problem: enough special digestive power from the sac (nicknamed the Appendix Version Two or simply App 2 by users) to digest metal, rubber, glass, and small doses of poisonous materials and just enough of the thick stomach lining to prevent ulcers but not cause pain when the user is eating soft food.

The Appendix Version Two spread through it’s niche of consumers in a matter of months, and soon the general public became interested and started to get it. Older people who had previously been irritated by certain foods were able to eat like they were fifteen years old again. Future Tec became one of the Top Four Leading Bioengineering firms and the CEO currently chairs the Genetic and Morphological Change Administration.

How the Appendix Two Works

The secretion of digestive juices by the App 2 creates a bell curve.

The Appendix Two can sense when a non-food item passes through the intestines. It then begins to produce digestive juices and enzymes that break down the item. However, it has a built in stopping point that prevents the level of acidic digestive juices in the gut from reaching a dangerous, ulcer causing level.

This design causes a bell curve. First, the body enhanced person swallows a piece of metal. The Appendix Two senses it and begins to produce and release the digestive juices quickly so that there is a rapid presence of it in the intestines. Once the presence of digestive juices begins to reach a dangerous level, the production of it peaks and levels off. When production is low, there are enough enzymes in the digestive tract to break down the metal with only small amounts being added from the Appendix Two. Production continues to drop off steeply until it stops altogether when the metal has passed through the system.

The Present Day

The Iron Stomach trait has indeed created a fledgling form of competitive eating in undigestibles. So far, this is still mostly an underground sport and only those who can afford body enhancements are able to participate. However, with the new proposal before Congress that would subsidize enhancements for the poor, eating bicycles competitively may soon become a common event.

With competitive eating emerging as one of the new major American sports along with the newly enhanced Leg Stilt Basketball (in which players with lengthened legs – anywhere from three to eight feet longer than average – play basketball using a fifty foot high hoop), the search for a natural Iron Stomach has emerged. Future Tec has offered a reward to anyone who can find or offer evidence of a naturally occurring, modern day Michel Lotito.

Video from the antiquated database "YouTube" is passed around in circles of expecting parents, all hoping to collect the reward if their child has the mutation. One father was even arrested for trying to force his three year old son to swallow a piece of a broken light bulb. Media outlets have criticized Future Tec, saying the reward they have offered is causing reckless behavior.

Michel Lotito is still the only know true Iron Stomach. The chances of the exact same point mutation occurring in someone else is very rare, and the chances of anyone with the mutation attempting to swallow hazardous substances even rarer. Although some users of the Appendix Two have begun a two year project to eat a Cessna 150 in order to replicate Lotito’s amazing stunt, he is unparalleled to this day.