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The images are in fact real and undoctored, and they are indeed photographs taken of a man whose brain surface was exposed and crawling with insects. As we learned at the time from sources involved with the patient's treatment, the pictures date from October 2002 and are photographs of a man in his 70s who was suffering from an unusual form of cancer which had eaten away at the upper portion of his skull and scalp, but who had not sought any medical treatment because the condition was not causing him pain. The man was brought to the trauma center at Stanford University Hospital (where the photographs shown here were taken) by San Mateo County paramedics who had been summoned to the scene after the man was involved in a minor automobile accident and who found him in his car in the condition pictured. He refused treatment for the cancer and died three months later. It was also the first published case of cerebral myiasis (brain maggots) in the US.
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