So you admit SHC is possible just unlikely, but that does not disprove this case at all anymore than probability math disproves the moon landing and Apollo 13's return to Earth, etc.

You have eight zeros which represents 1 in 1 billion - there are 7 billion people on Earth.

Then you shouldn't accuse people of lying before proven guilty.

Just because it's so improbable, does not mean it hasn't happened. It's rude to accuse others when they could be suffering.
It's more likely man didn't go to the moon, or that the crew of Apollo 13 never made it back to Earth - but both happened.

Post Merge: 10 years ago

Show me these studies that somehow show SHC cannot happen. Linking me to case studies on the wick effect and I'll ignore you. The wick effect, like SHC - has not been proven, all it's been demonstrated is that the wick effect produces similar burn patterns as seen with the victims. It certainly does NOT disprove the possibility of SHC anymore than the theory of the big bang disproves black holes.

SHC rarely shows its evidence - because the evidence burns away. This gives skeptics an excuse to plug their ears and pretend SHC doesn't happen because the only evidence that matters to them is if an actively spontaneously combusting person was thrown into a lab and studied while self-immolating.

Wow. Thank god I didn't give a higher possibility like 1%. In that case, you would say that 1% of all people will have SHC!!!
I didn't say that the disease is rare. I said that it's probably fake. You confuse these two things.
I believe that these two things probabliy happened because there are more proofs than the claims of just 3 people.
What is the logic on that?
Just search for it.

But you didn't answer my question. How do you expect people to believe something so improbable having as a proof the claims of 3 people? It's like believing people talking about ghosts.

I see that again I got carried away. There is no way you will change your mind, and I wonder why I am still trying. I'd think you are probably related to the subject somehow, I can't find any other explanation, since you believe something having no proofs at all.
I'll also try to resist and retire from the post once and for all. I know, you will make one more useless reply, you will alter everything I said and you will present other illogical examples to "prove" that SHC exists. In that case, I'm not willing to continue the discussion. Other people must be laughing hard reading all this...

The explanation for SHC is that a chemical imbalance (a build up of reactive chemicals) causes a lot of heat to be generated, for example hydrogen peroxide, at about 70%, will cause leather to spontaneously combust. Videos of this can be found on YouTube. Benzoyl peroxide is even more reactive (it's labled 3 on the reactive scale as opposed to 2 on HP's MSDS)

Wait, what?! Which math disproves Apollo 13?


I will show you these studies if you can show me studies that disprove the possibility of teleportation.
You can say that again lol

Are you sure Baker wasn't producing highly flamable jet fuel inside of him because of so-called chemical imbalances?

Allow me to ask a question; let's assume that a patch of dermal cells (or cells lying completely under the skin) instantly reached a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. The much drier skin and clothing on top of it ignites from the heat, and the fire is put out using external means (meaning whatever was causing the cells to heat to that temperature, did not last as long as the external flames as a result of the heat)

Now, a hypothetical biopsy is taken of the tissue in this scenario.

Would there be more severe damage externally (the skin) or internally, where the heating cells were located (under the skin/muscle, etc)?

Post Merge: 10 years ago

I may also ask: can nerves produce electrical sparks? This would explain the combustion.
500 Hz is the maximum rate nerves can fire - generate action potentials.
http://www.dspguide.com/ch22/1.htm

There is a flow of current, which produces tiny amounts of heat.
However nerves do not fire that frequently unless there is a problem.

Let's assume there is, and the nerves in the muscles begin to fire at 500 Hz (or whatever their maximum frequency happens to be).
This would surely produce more heat than normal, yes? I've known athletes comment that their body temperature increases after a work out, because the muscles are firing more often during exercise.

I also wonder if it's possible for damaged nerves to generate sparks. Diabetic myopathy causes the nerve cells to accumulate more ions than normal: ''in these patients, an enzyme called sodium potassium ATPase, know as the sodium pump because it pumps excess sodium ions out of the cell, does not work. When inflammation occurs, it triggers an increase in the number and sensitivity of sodium channels in the nerve cell membrane causing an influx of sodium with no way to get rid of it. Water follows the sodium into the nerve cells, causing swelling until the cells burst, a process called lysis.'' http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/lsuh-lrw092209.php

When these cells burst, the concentration decreases, so some current would be released. What about sparks? Nerves are just electrical wires anyway, and I doubt anyone has not heard about or seen an electrical wire sparking and how this can lead to fires.

(Keynote: the nerves in the skin aren't as wet as other nerves because they're located in a drier environment) A drier environment - higher chance of sparks being successfully produced.

Post Merge: 10 years ago

What if a human had a mutation that produced similar results to an electric eel whenever they sent impulses to the affected (mutated) area of cells, producing many volts and lots of current? I'd assume that not only would a lot of heat be released, but this would produce sparks, or even break down water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis resulting in an explosion.

SHC possible with an over-production of oxidizers in the cells + catalase/peroxidase deficiency?

I must also note that there are oxidizers created by the body's cells. Hydrogen peroxide, benzoyl peroxide, and nitrate: http://www.hmdb.ca/metabolites/HMDB02878

http://www.hmdb.ca/metabolites/HMDB32040

http://www.hmdb.ca/metabolites/HMDB03125

 benzoyl peroxide is very reactive, with a 3 in reactivity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzoyl_peroxide
Look on YouTube, there are videos of oxidizing liquids reacting with things like leather, making them spontaneously combust: Hydrogen Peroxide(99%) on leather HD

So what do y'all think? Do you think he's telling the truth?

I was too lazy to read all that Think about what in a nutshell?

Even if you present 1000 different and possible scenarios as to how SHC can be real, you are missing the most important thing: Evidence. The evidence of each one of the reported cases are very poor, and they usually are just claims of some people.

Also, you confuse 2 completely different things: whether or not SHC is possible has nothing to do with whether or not Mr Baker is telling the truth.
However, with the so far evidence, I would say that the answer is probably negative for both.

Although we presented some basic points why your theory about the electric eel is probably impossible, it is hard to talk about it any further, because we know very little about the mechanism of the electric eel (the articles provided very basic information). Again, until now all evidence shows that bit is very improbable.

so the controversy rages on... it's 2014 and we still don't know enough about our own bodies to safely conclude our cells can't heat themselves up to the point we combust.

We've never conducted research on something like this because no company is going to invest its time and money on something whose probability of ever occurring in nature is 1 in 1099. Who would want to invest their resources in this when there are far more important things in life. Even if a university decided to test some of these 'theories', they'd end up going bankrupt due to the lack of enrollment since no future student would want to be part of an institution that is so feeble-minded. Instead of answering questions here, I'm wasting my time talking about the possibility of spontaneously burning within - how stupid does that sound?!

if SHC wasn't real and was just an urban myth it wouldn't be reported in the news.

So you say that EVERYTHING reported in the news is real? 
What if I make a newspaper and report everything wrong?

well it made global news about a baby in India who kept combusting. the baby's name was Rahul, and the articles said the docs diagnosed him with SHC. It's been in the news several times. in 2010 there was a news article about a shc victim named michael farhety. latest news article is about frank baker surviving shc. all in different papers. (ABC news, The Hindu, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo, Daily, Mail etc etc.

How are there even related to Mr Baker? Even if SHC exists (which I highly doubt) how does that even prove anything about the Huffingtonpost you presented?

Also take a look at this about the new case you presented:
"However, no evidence was found to support the SHC claims, said Dr J Jagan Mohan, head of the burns department at the hospital.
‘I still stand by what I said, that there is no such thing as spontaneous human combustion,’ he said. ‘The possibility of child abuse exists and needs to be explored.’ "

Although this case of SHC is also probably fake, either way it provides no proof about Baker's claims.

Worldwide news are not more credible than other news. On the contrary, sometimes big newspapers and tv channels are more corrupted.

In conclusion, whatever the news, you must judge before believing.
NEVER believe something if there are no absolute proofs, and ALWAYS have doubts no matter how convincing the news might be.