Eeeewww!!!!!!!!!!!! <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
(from today's newspaper):
Maggots make medical comeback FDA okays them in wound cleaning, Patients accepting despite yuck factor
LAURAN NEERGAARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON�Think of these wriggly little creatures not as, well, gross, but as miniature surgeons: Maggots are making a medical comeback, cleaning out wounds that just won't heal.
Wound-care clinics around the country are giving maggots a try on some of their sickest patients after high-tech treatments fail.
It's a therapy quietly championed since the early 1990s by a California physician who's earned the nickname Dr. Maggot. But Dr. Ronald Sherman's maggots are getting more attention since, in January, they became the first live animals to win Food and Drug Administration approval � as a medical device to clean out wounds.
A medical device? They "mechanically" remove the dead tissue that impedes healing, the FDA determined. The process is called chewing.
But maggots do more than that, says Sherman, who raises the tiny, wormlike fly larvae in a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. His research shows that in the mere two to three days they live in a wound, maggots also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue.
Still, "it takes work to convince people" that "maggots do work very well," said Dr. Robert Kirsner, who directs the University of Miami Cedars Wound Center.
Actually, maggots' medicinal qualities have long been known. Civil War surgeons noted that soldiers whose wounds harboured maggots seemed to fare better. In the 1930s, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon's research sparked routine maggot therapy, until antibiotics came along a decade later.
Patients say maggot therapy is not that hard to accept. Pamela Mitchell of Akron, Ohio, begged to try maggots when surgeons wanted to amputate her left foot after an infection in a diabetic ulcer penetrated the bone. It took 10 cycles of larvae, but she healed completely.
Despite the yuck factor, "if you're faced with amputation or the maggots, I think most people would try the maggots,'' Mitchell said.
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Well, ok, since it's put THAT way......but still...