That took alot of Guts!!!

Why is this considered so amazing today? ... This method was practiced (smaller amounts) back in the 20th Century!

I guess we're all going to be getting CAT scans from the TSA at the airport soon.

Another reason why personal responsibility , shunning propaganda like cigarettes and regulations like alcohol should be used for drugs and the PROFIT MOTIVE should be removed as well as the COOL 007 factor should be attacked by the marketing media geniuses of america. Many folks do and sell drugs because the excitement from the culture of the black market party crowd, the cool factor is MUCH BIGGER than the govt wants folks to know---it is as addictive(the lifestyle) as the drugs them selves....ESPECIALLY to young folks....after they are busted they are condemned for life and cant pay as much in taxes and turn to a lif in crime because of our stupid drug laws.

The only folks that benefit from out drug laws are the folks that make and enforce the laws.

The same number that abuse the drug today would abuse the drug 10 years from now after an initial spike in use subsides.

Do more research before you comment. Even HBO's documentary on the subject showed that allowed usage of drugs in the US would still over 26 billion dollars a year in medical problems. Countries like the Netherlands where marijuana use is decriminalized still has similar numbers of drug problems percentage wise as here in the US. Legalization isn't the answer everyone says it is.

Thunder. It's pretty amazing that the guy could swallow that many bags and that the images are so clear.
That's amazing. Quit trying to be so cool. It ain't working.

To all the cocaine users out there..... Just remember, you're putting stuff up your nose that came out of someone's butt.

Well you can tell it's the Holidays.

I LOVE THOSE LITTLE SAUSAGES

odin , i have done research and you need the education.

The drug war just like the war on poverty is a failure and both cause more HARM than GOOD!

What a bunch of morons. THIS IS FAKE and it's all designed to keep brainwashed twits like you supporting a failed war on people who use illegal drugs, as if the legal drugs were any good at all.

Also, I have spent time in Amsterdam, and let me assure you, there is a whole different feel to the place than here, knowing the cops are there to help rather than stalking you, waiting for you to smoke a simple joint.....It's amazing....the cops get off work and smoke too....peace in the streets!!! Nothing is wrong with pot. It's been used for 1000's of years.....and it's much better than alcohol.

Suzanna: That was a good pun, but I was actually thinking the guy must not have ANY guts to fit all that inside his body! Where did he fit the rest of himself? Perhaps since he was Irish he didn't have a liver?

Further proof that Dope is for dopes.

Hey Chuck, didn't you just reprimand me for the same type of post on the Rick Perry thread?

I was being sarcastic - it doesn't show up well in a written format. I was a professional musician for twenty years, not many things I haven't seen.

Yes it doesn't show up. And you should remember who we are dealing with here - "uneducated folks who are looking for a punchline they don't even understand"

Heroin is dope. But a lot of Americans think marijuana is the same thing. We should be LEGALIZING marijuana but when "uneducated Americans" see your post "Dope is for dopes", it hinders the movement to do the right thing which is relegalizing marijuana.

Notice I didn't use the word "cannabis" as our "uneducated friends" wouldn't have a clue as to what cannabis is..........

Odinandpuff,
No one beleives legalizing drugs will eliminate all of the drug related problems. Keep in mind, we can limit the spread of HIV, STDs, HEP A, B, and C, along with other types of commmunicable deseases.
Just think of how much commerce and tax money that could be generated by the US if it is legalized? Just the same as the money generated by the state of Nevada as a result of legalized Prostitution...not to mention the savings to Law enforcement trying to combat sale and distribution.

I'm not a fan, a user or even someone who promotes the use of controlled substances, but I am a realist. The war on drugs is a wet-dream.

Toosano - Once you get over your amazement, notice that a contrasting agent was given. When you get past that modern marvel consider something else . . . If you found my comment an attempt to be "so cool", then perhaps you have an odd idea of what is construed as "cool" and what is not. It comes as no surprise to me that "it ain't working" because I never tried to imply such.

Mark

You are correct,

fake as the day is long. The fact that anyone believes this 3 D image is a "scan" is a true "dope"

The clarity of the images is more shocking than the number of bags this idiot was carrying!

Even more scary is the fact that the stuff probably licked and was startin to spread to his inside including the bones and to the ass....in situations like this, ya cough, ya end up with a coke bag out the ass....

Has money become this important to the modern neanderthal?

I actually am suspicious of these images. They do not look real to me. I don't doubt that they caught a smuggler, but there are packets in the region of the lungs and other organs where the digestive track is not located. I have never seen colored images other than on a PET scan. An X-ray would be in black and white. Something about these images is just not right. I thing the govt. may just want its 15 minutes of fame for catching a drug mule--I guess that is ok, but I still do not believe that these images are the real MCoy.

whoosh!

Yes. Creepy.

This really must stop, and now.

If there were no market for the "crap," there would be nobody whose life is put at risk in this game of high payoff, but oh so dangerous, game of cat and mouse.

Young folks: Do you have any idea? This is not what life is about. No temporary-high, with devastating and long lasting damage to your body and your brain, is worth it. We are issued only one body, so, take very good care of yours.

Live long enough to appreciate my words, and appreciate a new life--a drug-free life. It does exist. Find it.

Nice awareness there Colorblind!! Now everyone will go back and look closer. And nice that you are one of the ones that don't react emotionally right off the get go!!

Mark-768209 - I think you and I have a lot of common ground to meet on.
Good post.

Wow, I don't know if i can stomach this image...

being a xray tech for 15 yrs in dont the images are real. im not up on the newest 3d tech but im pretty certain they dont have ct scanners that can produce such good quality and color as theses images. i could be compeletly wrong on this. like color said there are ballons where the lungs should be. unless this guy has one of the biggest stomachs know to man

If you are a user-see where this stuff has been??!! Not to mention who made it,did they know what they were doing???

Thanks Chuck!

Really, Thunder. You're doing it again.

Not holy crap - cocaine crap!

Judging from the scan, the dude really needs to go!

I am guessing that these are pictures taken at autopsy of a dead mule. Some of the balloons appear to be broken...at the sigmoid colon and near the ribs. They look more like pictures that have been modified rather than X-rays. Hmmmm....Maybe, I am mistaken, but I am highly suspicious of these images.

He farted. ;)

dude...x ray (hi tech obviously)

More than likely a sniffer dog found residual cocaine on him and the police started to question him, which is probably where he started showing signs of anxiety thus raising more questions.

Then they x-rayed him after he confessed.

He burped and the sniffer dog zoned in on him.

obama found it while kissing yet another a55

Looks like my ex girlfriend.

How'd they catch him? The huge cloud of white powder he blew from his butt-cheeks at the check-in possibly gave it away

Are you serious? Hi tech X-ray? This is a 3-d modeling program obviously. X-ray is 2-D.

This is a 3D model off of a CT scan. And yes, they can display color. Modern technology, isn't it great! I find it funny that people with no imaging background are saying how fake these images are.

computed tomography

How else?

you mean up the sphincter? (insert vomit here) I don't even think that's possible...I've counted at least 30...anybody agree?

He could have inserted them up his rectum until the colon was filled but not up into the small intestine and stomach. What is amazing is that he did not die from the sheer number. Anything for a buck I guess.

PS...what are those two little "eyeball" things in the right hand photo. Makes me wonder if photo's are genuine.

The "eyeball things" are in both pictures, they're just in a different angle in the other one. Don't know what they are though.

"eyeball" things look like maybe buttons.

Eyeball things = belt rivets

resection

How do you know he put them down his throat?

OMG, you're not serious...

The eyeball things look like "googlie eye's" like they glue on greeting cards & cheap novelty toys !

FOLKS! This person did not "swallow" these Coke balloons. Stomach acid would have slowly destroyed the "balloon" getting from point A to point B & the mule would have died a painfull coke overdose / heart attack & the "exporter" would have lost all the product.

Noooooo, they were inserted the "old fashion way".

You are probably right, Badeck. In order to make the scan look so impressive, the scanner software applies a color to a different instensity of signal (sort of like doppler radar on your local weather color codes different intensity storms). The googly eyes have similar intensity (density) as the ribs. Some elements of certain denisty have been eliminated, such as all elements that have the same density of the intestines themselves. This makes the cocaine bags show up so well.

I think I may have figured this out...They took a picture of a skeleton...which would account for the white color and added the balloons for effect. This just isn't what a regular X-ray looks like. Wonder what the true story is....

folks, folks, folks. look at the picture. they're not in his stomach. they were surgically implanted.

actually they are all throughout his digestive track, including the stomach.

They were not implanted, they were swallowed and he would @!$%# them out, and if complications i guess he had a back up plan---pun intended.

Really, I don't think he swallowed or keistered them. It was a photo shopped picture of a skeleton.

Maybe they're just little balls of poop.

Mules use laxatives ... lots of them, until they're all passed. Damn, I hope he counts them all or that upcoming "panic attack" will just be a quick and lethal cocaine overdose.

That's a GOOD one! lol!! Thanks for the laugh, Oflife! : )

Agreed; that's some stunning imagry. But I don't think that's film. Out of curiosity, I Googled the "Sensation 64" plus "scan" to see if it would give me a clue as to what sort of imaging this was. Turns out the imaging device has to have been the Siemens Somatom Sensation 64, and it does X-ray computed tomography. Or in more familiar terms to laymen like me: It's a CT scanner. So the imagry is computer generated. And if the Siemens site is correct, it's very close to being on-the-fly:

This scanner is the first one in the world that is able to take 192 images of
the patient’s heart per second. You will be able to obtain clear and sharp
pictures of your patient’s organs, tissue, blood vessels and more in as little
as only 10 seconds.

Simply amazing. But no, it doesn't appear to be film based at all (someone with more knowledge can chime in or correct me if need be).

No, it's not film...film isn't used anymore, it is all done by computers. The scanner takes the images with x-ray just like always, but it is faster, bigger, better. Then, they can digitally process and enhance the images to make the above 3d rendering. Pretty cool what you can do nowadays, huh? Of course, they only cost about 1.5 mil or so.

I do CT scans for a living and yes this is what that is. I dont have a 64 slice but I can get the same quality images from our 16 slice scanner. We use a comp. program to "filter" the original scan to get these images

guys, when ppl say "films" in reference to ct's, x-rays, and mri's, they don't literally mean film, anymore. it's just a coloquialism.

Yeah, those are from CT. The images look so good because they are post-processed. The native CT scan information is just in high-resolution grayscale, but you can segment out different organs with algorithms to give you the 3D view like is shown in the images. I am a medical physicist, and we do this everyday for patients in radiation therapy to see the beam placements. Still, incredibly amazing images!

Kowlover: Exactly. Like when the battery on my digital camera goes flat and I say I'm "out of film." My kids look at me like I've got three heads - they've never even seen camera film!

Or, when a friend of mine tells his son that he "sounds like a broken record." The boy has no idea what a record is.

I know you do CT's for a living, but CT's come out in grey and white...not in living color. CT's also take slices of pictures.....like tomography. When they found the tumor in my lung and showed it to me, it was in grey and white. Didn't even come close to looking like this....and they did it in full 3D and rotated it so I could see the whole thing. It was pretty scary. Got scarier.

@colorblind: The Sensation 64 advertises the ability of its software package to do color keying. It's false coloration, obviously, but that's where it comes from.

Or the eyelets/grommets where the drawstrings come out to tie. . . Good guess. That makes more sense than a belt or whatever since there are only two of them.

to nightfury, ... heeeey, ... doperz don care where it came from, long as they kin get-tit.

Thass what'chu call Hooked.

Assuming for the moment he was forced.... why even wait for him to poop it out. My guess is that he was a dead man the moment he arrived at his destination.

Actually I doubt the smuggler "crew" would want to draw attention to themselves by wasting a mule. They actually would want to reuse them. Given the amount of drugs smuggeled, they probably need hundreds of them trying to cross travel at one time, to account for "breakage".

Wait... you published a comment just so you could say "no comment"?

That' s more believable -- willing or not, whatever got someone to the point of having to do this is sad.

A steak looks the same in the stomach.

right. the small intestine is below the stomach, not above it and certain not at the chest level. the "sausages" appear to be placed in random directions. they do not form a chain like the shape of the intestines.

Those can't be real because those look like 3D reconstructed cat scans. Why would they spend all the time and money to do that when they could have just x-rayed the guy?

Uh no, your GI tract begins in the "chest" with your esophagus ... Take a look at any photo of the anatomy of the GI... these are very much real.

I do CT scans for a living and these are real pics. I make these kinds of pics almost every day. The reason the bags look like a chain is because your small bowel and large bowel is just a long tube that ends at your anus. There is only room for one at a time. so he had to have swallowed them one at a time. If you look at the pic again, yes the bags are up by the ribs but its because he is so full his intestine are pushing his lungs up higher. Think of a preg. woman with a full term baby. All of your organs can move and since the bags have nowhere else to go the lungs have to move for them.

I would like to point out that your stomach is much higher than where most people think it is. Find the bottom of the sternum (breastbone) and move a few inches to the left and that is roughly were your stomach begins. OneMadMother brings up a good point about the organs shifting.

Well from the cat scan I had last year looking at my insides I can tell you it is fake...unless this is the special....drug mule....cat scan machine.

Also use logic people...In your mind make one soilid object out of those hotdogs. A kilo of coke is 6"x2"x8"....the result of that would be two kilo minimum...even the story reporting doesn't match the photos....WAKE UP.

Um, no, you're wrong. Look up the Siemens Somatom Sensation 64. This is not a single CT scan, it's a series of "slices" reconstructed by a computer to build a 3-D image.

Look up 3-D x-ray computed tomography. That's what you're seeing. There are various types of CT scans, you can't make a blanket judgement on just one type.

Some of those bags are way up in his chest cavity. Surgical implantation is the only way to get them there. They would apply tremendous pressure to his organs. I believe the images are fake...or at least doctored up.

The images look just like those of a colored 3-dimensional CT scan aka CAT scan or computed tomography. The article mentions X-ray (I think) but the images are obviously not that at all. However, they certainly could be a CT scan...the 3D kind in color, not the type slicing the body in thin sections. You can view some examples of results from various types of medical imaging methods on this page (among many):

http://www.inmagine.com/searchterms/spinal_column.html.

Bear in mind that CT scans need a contrast media in order to make soft tissue clearly viewable & iit's given orally or intravenously depending on needs to be examined. More often than not, it will involve intravenous contrast to allow detailed visualization of the blood vessels & organs they supply but not the intestinal tract (it's hollow & relatively thin so not enough contrast in the blood along its walls to show up). Oral contrast will permit clear visualization of the intestinal tract but not the blood vessels & organs. Bones, not being soft tissue, show up either way.

I think I remember seeing a faint notation below or along the bottom of the images in the story indicating an oral contrast which is what you'd expect in looking to see what was inside the intestinal tract on this type of imaging.

And whoever complained that the bags were all over the place & in the lungs needs to take an anatomy lesson or two on the human intestinal tract & how long it is as well as the size & position of the lungs at rest & expanded. And consider how pushed out it would become when filled to maximum capacity from start to finish as it would be with this many bags of cocaine in it. The human body has plenty of room inside for the intestines to be pushed up in front & around all sorts of places beyond their usual resting place if too full...otherwise a person might explode if they engaged in an overeating contest (yuck). Not that it would be that comfortable or easy to take a deep breath.

time for some high-school biology: the locations of the stomach and the intestine:

http://medicalimages.allrefer.com/large/stomach-and-small-intestine.jpg

I certainly hope so!

Wrong. They aren't "photos" at all. They're medical images. And, apparently (if you'd bother reading any other comments before posting your own) very real.

dude get a life and learn something, these are not made to scare ppl, they are very real. Go on down to Mexico or Columbia and ask them yourself. I am pretty sure they will be more than willing to show you how its done and when you finish throwing them up or &^*@#ing them out, then you can make the comment of are they real or not.

How muleing is done..yes

Images real....no

Go have a cat scan. You can only focus on one area to cut away skin. This image ahs all intestines cut away. Fake as the day is long.

I say fake via photoshop. The real image would not be so vivid colors and such..obviously doctored.

Good post Mark. As a nurse I have seen thousands of X-rays and CT scans and none look like this. This looks like a photo shopped skeleton.

They look very real. I do this sort of thing all of the time in CT. its called volume rendering. colors are based on the density of the structures being imaged.

WHY are people so amazed at people doing this in today's economy.. add it up. Say a kilo of coke is probably going for $75,000.. Thats alot of money for bieng unconfortable on a plane ride. Poeple go thru more pain at a dentist and have to pay them.. Hover if a bag breaks inside him he will be dead before the plane could land.. people do desperate things in these times

Mike: these are PHOTOS created by some highschool drop-out using Photoshop. they are not "medical images" as you foolishly believe. if you had bothered to read the 2 comments i had posted above this post, you would have known that.

proud texan: LOL i'll bet you drive a beat up truck with a roll of duct tape in the glove compartment and own 27 hunting rifles. who said drug trafficking done in this fashion wasn't real? we are talking about the validity of the PHOTOS. learn to read please.

here, EDUCATE yourself on the locations of the stomach and the intestines (where these bags are supposed to be). there are way too many bags that are placed where the stomach and the small intestine are NOT supposed to be (that big top left cluster of bags in the first *PHOTO*)

http://medicalimages.allrefer.com/large/stomach-and-small-intestine.jpg

@Mark.

1. This is imagry produced by X-ray computed tomography, aka "CT scan". Yes, a modern scanner will be able to take axial slices and then reformat that information into 3D imagry, practically on the fly. Look up the Siemens Somatom Sensation 64.
2. Re: Locations - When the stomache, intestines, or in the case of a pregnant woman the uterus distends to do content, it will push up into the chest area. Exacerbate that with the fact that the intestines are full AND the guy is laying down on a table in order to get scanned; you get total distention.

As said by a doctor in the other story:

... the diaphragm is attached to the lowest rib but the hemi-domes of the diaphragm extend up to the 4th intercostal space near the nipple line. A distended stomach will displace the spleen and the fundus will touch the diaphragm at the level of the 5th rib. The splenic flexure of the colon often extends to the 7th intercostal space. Bottom Line: This Images is perfectly consistent with normal anatomy, but even it if wasn't, a hiatal hernia would be all it takes to explain it.

I'm an ER doc, but don't take my word for it, just look at the Netter plate entitled "Regions and Planes of the Abdomen." (Available via Google Images for those who don't have Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy). Conspiracy theorists get believed too easily sometimes.

People, people, people! I find it a bit amusing that this is the first time that anyone has ever heard of a mule and how the drug is routed and er, re-routed. BTW, what about the chemicals that are used to cut the product? Selling "pure" cocaine is not the norm.

Dan, it was only a matter of time before some dumb arse brought up Palin. Put her picture down and get out of the bathroom.

Bitter your damsel in distress is a coked up hobag?

Yes....Im a CT tech and Ive done images like this before. Not for drugs but for other things

LMAO classic. Racist to the PC crowd but funny as heck to me LOL

Yes it was extremely racist but i chuckled a little. Lets face it everyone is a little racist and as long as you don't treat peopld wrongly because of it so what.

Irish isn't a race - it's a nationality.