Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

There was always speculation in the hollows about what made the blue people blue: heart disease, a lung disorder, the possibility proposed by one old-timer that "their blood is just a little closer to their skin." But no one knew for sure, and doctors rarely paid visits to the remote creekside settlements where most of the "blue Fugates " lived until well into the 1950s. By the time a young hematologist from the University of Kentucky came down to Troublesome Creek in the 1960s to cure the blue people, Martin Fugate's descendants had multiplied their recessive genes all over the Cumberland Plateau.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I live in Eastern Kentucky and I have hever seen a blue person.

Pravada

(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 21-6-2007 by free_spirt]

I grew up in NorthEastern Ky, and while I wasn't around in the 50's, I also never saw a blue person, except that one time I went to a Wildcat basketball game at Rupp Arena... that was interesting.

Methemoglobinemia, also known as "met-Hb", is a disorder characterized by the presence of a higher than normal level of methemoglobin in the blood. Methemoglobin is a form of hemoglobin that does not bind oxygen. When its concentration is elevated in red blood cells a functional anemia and tissue hypoxia may occur. Normally methemoglobin levels are

The Kentucky Wildcat fans is the only blue people I have ever seen.

here's a link of the actual people you were talking about:

www.rootsweb.com...

Six generations after a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek with his redheaded American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs.

The boy inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's slightly nasal way of speaking.

What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. "It was almost purple," his father recalls.

Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy's skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the hospital near Hazard to a medical clinic in Lexington. Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a bruised plum.

A transfusion was being prepared when Benjamin's grandmother spoke up. "Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek?" she asked the doctors.

"My grandmother Luna on my dad's side was a blue Fugate. It was real bad in her," Alva Stacy, the boy's father, explained. "The doctors finally came to the conclusion that Benjamin's color was due to blood inherited from generations back."

[edit on 21-6-2007 by elevatedone]

That's the wildest story I have ever heard, I'll have to ask my parent's if they have heard of this ,sorry if it's been posted before but this just blow's my mind,Do you think they are ALIENS???

some more info with a link to a photo of "blue" hands next to "normal" hands.

Can you please post a link to the original post?

BTW, could they be referring to the Picts?, The Picts used to paint themselves all in blue.

I kind of doubt there were any Picts left who painted themselves in blue in the 1950s though.

[edit on 21-6-2007 by Muaddib]

duh

www.metafilter.com...

I have never heard of this, yet there seems to be quite a few links out there covering this subject. I am intrigued! Thanks for posting this!

Is this like the green children thing?

CX.

Nice post free_Spirt!

I was born and raised in Kentucky, but the only thing I recall people being blue is the bluegrass. I've never heard of this.

Colloidal silver poisoning?

Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Stan Jones, speaks Sept. 23, 2002, during a debate at the Great Falls Civic Center in Great Falls, Mont. Jones has a distinct blue-gray skin color, the result of taking too much of an anti-bacterial form of pure silver. Jones said he started taking colloidal silver in 1999 in preparation for what he feared might be Y2K disruptions that could lead to a shortage of antibiotics.

[edit on 21-6-2007 by nataylor]

I did a science report on this subject in high school. I don't remember exactly what was the underlying cause. I do remember reading something about all the generations of inbreeding that went on in this part of the country had something to do with it. Not trying to start a fight just stating what I remember ready. If I can find the article I'll post it.

Here is the link and part of the article.


www.rootsweb.com...www.rootsweb.com...< br />
Stumped, the doctor turned to the medical literature for a clue. He found references to methemoglobinemia dating to the turn of the century, but it wasn't until he came across E. M. Scott's 1960 report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (vol. 39, 1960) that the answer began to emerge.

Scott was a Public Health Service doctor at the Arctic Health Research Center in Anchorage who had discovered hereditary methemoglobinemia among Alaskan Eskimos and Indians. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. If this conversion continued, all the body's hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. Scott also concluded that the condition was inherited as a simple recessive trait. In other words, to get the disorder, a person would have to inherit two genes for it, one from each parent. Somebody with only one gene would not have the condition but could pass the gene to a child.

Scott's Alaskans seemed to match Cawein's blue people. If the condition were inherited as a recessive trait, it would appear most often in an inbred line.

A former friend of mine who used to work at a psychiatric institution, described to me certain patients who were taking a particular psychotropic drug during the 80's/early 90's having a distinct blueish tinge to their skin, noticeably so apparently...

I've googled my butt off trying to find the name of this drug, but have drawn a blank...Damn I wish I still had Mark's number, but maybe this is the cause of what people saw ?

I will try to contact him and ask what drug it was and keep searching online....

Peace

I don't think it would have been referring to picts, they were from Scotland and painted themselves blue for battle or whatever. These Kentucky lot are said to be born blue. From the link with the hands picture though I can't see why they would call that blue. It just looks a bit pale to me

Anyone else have any pics of 'blue' people?

There is already a post concerning this topic...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This reminds me of the story of the cow who ate Kentucky Bluegrass and Mooed Indigo.