Daily Apple Fails To Repel Doctor
Despite eating an apple every day in the belief that it would thwart the doctor's attempts to enter her home, California woman Joan Markson was finally visited by the doctor late last night.
42 year-old Markson, who had avoided the doctor for over nine years, described the experience tearfully in a press conference yesterday.
"It was just awful," she said, sobbing. "He burst into the living room with his black medical bag, laughing maniacally, shining his little flashlight into my eyes to blind me."
The doctor then proceeded to give Markson a "checkup", wherein he used various tools to assess her state of health.
"It was horrible," she added.
Though Markson was lucky to escape the visit with a declaration of good health from the doctor, some others have not had her fortune.
"I've heard the doctor telling people they have all kinds of cancers, or some kind of horrible venereal disease," she said. "Even though the experience was traumatic for me, I'm very grateful the doctor didn't tell me anything I didn't want to hear."
Police experts say Markson's biggest folly in attempting to avert the doctor's visit was her belief in the consumption of a daily apple to prevent -- or at least prolong -- his arrival. According to LAPD criminal psychologist Carrie Yurik, this notion is entirely mythical, and has no real basis in fact.
"Believing that eating an apple every day will keep the doctor away from you is as ridiculous as believing in the man on the moon," she stated bluntly. "An apple does not contain nearly enough nutrients to satisfy the doctor's recommendations for a healthy diet, and it also isn't good enough to cancel out any negative behaviors you may indulge in, such as smoking."
Furthermore, said Yurik, laboratory experiments concerning the daily consumption of apples have been "catastrophic".
"We've tried to test the validity of the [apple] claim by running tests in which lab mice were only given apples as their food, and were not allowed to indulge in any activities other than consuming apples and sleeping. The mice eventually died from inactivity and nutritional depravation."
Luckily for Markson, she did not take the apple advice nearly so seriously, eating the apples on top of her usual diet, and living her life normally. But she warned others that they might not be so lucky.
"There's no quick-fix way to avoid the doctor," she said. "Including apples."
