OOOHH! You scared me! Yeah right! I have got this message (Look below) from few of my friends, and this shows how quickly this types of messages spread over the net, jamming your email boxes. This is a hoax, meaning that it is not coming from a true source. I am guessing it is tied to April fool’s day, and this means that all of you who started to believe this message and passed it on, are fooled. The second possibility is that some sick person created this to cause panic among people, and I personally applause to his/her creativity.

This is what I did to discover it is a hoax and not a true message. First of all, what is the credibility of the writer? Someone who is a director of some known medical research institute at least has few publications. I search medical databases including thousands of articles and publication from scholars around the world and I did not find this person namely ‘Arvind KHamitkar.’

Secondly, what the hell ‘I.A.S.’ stands for? Maybe it is some medical term which a technology guy like me does not know, but if the writer is professional and knows the audience, he should have written the full title instead of its abbreviation.

As the third reason, ‘Chennai’ is the name of a city and not an institution.

The fourth reason is simple. It says the girl who was engaged dies of ‘Shock thought’! Oh, really. What does this mean? Can you explain it to me? Any decent doctor, knows how aid kill people, perhaps not by ‘Shock thought.’

There are also few grammatical, punctuation, and dictation errors which I am not going to list them all, but I can say the person who wrote this was a professional chatter. He/She used ‘ur’ instead of your in the last sentence. Though, that could have been written by somebody who passed it on.

Anyways, I gave my analogy. Please have fun sharing yours. And last but not least, here is the original message:

Dear All,
Be careful
(Don’t avoid Pls read this mail)
FROM
Arvind Khamitkar , I.A.S,
Director of Medical & Research Div,Chennai

Dear Friends and Public,

A few weeks ago, in a movie theater, a person felt something poking from her seat.When she got up to see what it was, she found a needle sticking out of the seat with a note attached saying “You have just been infected by HIV”. The Disease Control Center (in Paris ) reports many similar events in many other cities recently. All tested needles were HIV Positive.

The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines.We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use. A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.

Recently, one doctor has narrated a somewhat similar instance that hppened to one of his patients at the Priya Cinema in Delhi . A young girl, engaged and about to be married in a couple of months, was pricked while the movie was going on. The tag with the needle had the message welcome to the World of HIV family”. Though the doctors told her family that it takes about 6 months before the virus grows strong enough to start damaging the system and a healthy victim could survive about 5-6 years, the girl died in 4 months, perhaps more because of the “Shock thought”.

We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help! Just think about saving a life by forwarding this message. Please, take a few seconds of your time to pass along.

With Regards, Arvind Khamitkar ,
I.A.S, Director of Medical & Research Div, Chennai.

Rather than forwarding irrelevant mails, kindly pass this to every one. Probably ur mail can help some save his/her life .