Tapeworms... as a weight loss product?

So I'm wandering around Yahoo! Answers one day and there's a girl who is desperate to lose a ton of weight within two weeks, in time for her prom. She has apparently heard that tapeworms make you lose a ton of weight quickly and wants to know how quickly they work. I sincerely hope that no one reading this has actually considered this - but then, if you found my site on a search engine it's probably because you are considering it.

You would be better off deciding to be anorexic for two weeks.

Tape worms, kill you. They could end up in all sorts of vital organs, where they will use up everything your body needs to survive. If they end up in your stomach, which I assume is the goal, you will starve to death. It's like anorexia without the effort of avoiding food - because the thing will eat everything you put into your body.

Often people with tape worms show no symptoms... well, until they end up in the hospital.

Signs and symptoms of tape worms in your intestines:
-Nausea
-Diarrhea
-Significant weight loss/malnutrition (which makes you look like you're from a third world country)
-Abdominal pain
-Weakness

When it gets into other organs, it will cause tissue and organ damage:
-Fever
-Cystic masses/lumps
-Allergic reaction to the larvae
-Bacterial infections
-Siezures and other bodily malfunctions if it gets into your brain

It can kill you within a month, depending on which part of your body it gets to... and as you can see, it wouldn't be pleasant. The girl who originally got me on this topic wouldn't even make it to her prom if she tried this method.

And if that wasn't enough to deter you...

The treatment could be medication or surgery. The medication can cause dizzieness, hair loss, fever, nausea, vomiting. The surgery can be extremely invasive and take a long time to recover from depending on how far the infection has gotten, and it won't return your bodily functions to how they were before.

I know it's bad form to start off a blog with an old response - but this issue still shocks me, and I wanted to make sure I remembered to post it.