Man Gets 20-Foot Tapeworm from Eating Raw Meat

A man in China who enjoyed eating raw beef became infected with a parasite — a 20-foot-long tapeworm —that came from including this food in his diet, a new case report reveals. The parasite had attached to the 38-year-old man's small intestine and had likely been inside him for at least two years before doctors diagnosed the infection as beef tapeworm of the species Taenia saginata, according to the case report, published online today (Jan. 20) in The New England Journal of Medicine.