A silly dare among a group of friends turned into a tragedy that left a young man paralyzed and then claimed his life.
When 19-year-old Sam Ballard gulped a slug after being dared by his friends, he never assumed his life would change for the worse.
Shortly after the stunt, Ballard complained of leg pain, which doctors believed to be a multiple sclerosis, a disease his father suffered from. However, it was later determined that the young man contracted rat lungworm, a parasitic infection found in rodents that can also infect snails and slugs through the larvae in their feces.
