David Blaine Helps Himself and Medical ScienceInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Skinny Boy

Talk about your backhanded compliments. South Africa’s Mercury newspaper wrote in its Medical section, “When US magician David Blaine starved himself for 44 days in 2003 inside a glass box suspended over London, many condemned the stunt as pointless. Not so, say doctors specialising in malnutrition.”

The article does not quote Professor Jeremy Powell-Tuck of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine in London, on any other aspect of the 44 days in a plastic viewing case.

The physicians who treated Mr. Blaine found “emaciated frame had been a gold mine of information about how the body coped with extreme hunger.”

Strangely, assuming Mr. Blaine did not really starve, he was seriously low on peptides, or protein building blocks, as well as blood phosphates, and was suffering from vitamin deficiency and weight loss.

He did recover quickly and demonstrated that a short-term re-feeding program can restore a starving victim or hunger striker’s normal eating patterns.

Key to the recovery, say the physicians, is vitamins.

In the November 28, 2003 edition of Inside Magic, we covered Mr. Blaine’s initiation into Dr. Powell-Tuck’s study. We regretfully noted that Mr. Blaine’s habit of caring only for himself curtailed the study after only four days.

Originally the study was to benefit cancer patients and their efforts to regain weight after radiation or chemo therapies. It is not clear whether the study’s goals had to be modified when Mr. Blaine decided to break the protocol and eat fish and chips in the hospital cafeteria but it certainly couldn’t have helped.

It would be unfortunate if this is the reason why the currently published study does not mention any recommendations for cancer patients but only hunger strikers. It is only surmise and we hope it is incorrect.

Read the Mercury article…

Skinny Boy

The article does not quote Professor Jeremy Powell-Tuck of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine in London, on any other aspect of the 44 days in a plastic viewing case.

The physicians who treated Mr. Blaine found “emaciated frame had been a gold mine of information about how the body coped with extreme hunger.”

He did recover quickly and demonstrated that a short-term re-feeding program can restore a starving victim or hunger striker’s normal eating patterns.

Key to the recovery, say the physicians, is vitamins.