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Duct Tape Can Remove Warts
chris_calabrese writes "According to this Reuters article on Yahoo! News, "Duct tape, already legendary for its many uses, can also be deployed to get rid of warts, U.S. Army researchers said on Monday." The basic idea is to tape over the warts and suffocate them. Apparently more effective than the traditional cryotherapy too."
It takes 2 to 3 years to train to be a doctor
Lol. That's a good one. Let's see, a bachelor's degree, that's 3-4 years. Then four years of medical school-- and no, you can't "test out" of any of it; medical school is four years, and that's that. Then three to six years of residency, depending on your specialty.
If you're a true badass who chooses the right specialty-- and I'm not even going to count undergrad time here-- you can become a doctor in as little as seven years. And that's if you pick one of the "easy" specialties with a short residency. If you do what my girlfriend is doing-- get your MD/PhD, then do a surgical residency, then a fellowship-- you're looking at an upper bound of fifteen consecutive years of training. That's three years for a PhD in biology, four years for an MD, six years of residency at a teaching hospital, and two more years of fellowship before you can go get an actual job practicing medicine.
Doctors are better trained than you give them credit for.
I write in my journal
From the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
l l/ poa20075.html
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/issues/v156n10/rfu
A clue for the clueless -- DO NOT PUNCTURE WARTS UNLESS YOU WANT MORE OF THEM!
The virus that causes warts is easily spread from lymphatic fluid from a punctured wart.
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it's just called "foil tape", made from thin aluminum.
I actually heard on the radio several months back that Duct Tape has been banned (at least in California) from use in ducting because it breaks down rather quickly.
"what ended up working was some kind of beetle juice (no, I am not kidding, this was what the doctor said it was)"
Cantharidin. It's a blistering agent, extracted from (what else) the blister beetle.
BTW, cantharidin is also the substance known as "Spanish Fly". Although I do not recommend that anyone try drinking wart remover, as this substance is highly toxic when taken internally.
or, worse, something contagious like leprosy
Technically, leprosy may be considered contagious, but the reality is that you will not contract it unless you have a genetic vulnerability towards it. I guess its been bred out of the gene pool. I also believe its "spread" by contact, not airborne. I'd worry more about tuberculosis...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I've never heard of a 6 year residency program.
There are several. I know University of Washington's otolaryngology residency is 6 years. I believe that UCSD's is as well.
Incidentally, my girlfriend got her PhD because it paid for medical school. She is interested in academics, but her career of choice is ear, nose, and throat surgery. At the University of Texas, you get to go to school for free if you get into the MD/PhD program. Quite a bargain.
I write in my journal
The doctors think there is something in the adhesive of the duct tape, which triggers a humans antibodies which attack the warts.
In fact, it seems to cure all warts, not just those covered by duct tape.
The directions were, cut a small piece of DT to cover the wart: (a) 6 days on; (b) 1 day off (c) repeate for a month or two.
Evidently parents really like this cus the duct tape is cheap and *stays on*.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Dude, do you have a problem with doctors in general, or are you just uninformed? I can't accept that you honestly believe that "it's the people in the labs that diagnose and prescribe."
Have you ever seen a lab report? Let's try this little exercise. I got my girlfriend to type this up for me based on something she dealt with the other night.
Your patient is a 45-year-old white male who presented in the ER with severe radiating abdominal pain and vomiting. He has a history of mild abdominal pain for several years. Vitals: pulse 80, BP 130/70, respirations 30. The patient is alert and oriented, but is obviously in severe pain localized to his abdomen and back. Upon examination, the abdomen is soft with guarding and tenderness is the upper right epigastric area. No bowel sounds heard. Some vomiting with blood was observed.
What do you do, cloudmaster? You're the doc, so what do you do? Get labs? Okay, let's see the labs. You ordered a CBC, BMP, glucose, and liver panel. (Sorry for the formatting; if I tabularized it, the lameness filter got all riled up.)
Test : Result : Normals
white count : 16.3 : 4.3-10.9
hematocrit : 45.0 : 41-53
platelet count : 344000 : 150000-450000
sodium : 141 : 137-145
potassium : 3.0 : 3.6-5.4
chloride : 98 : 98-107
bicarbonate : 25 : 22-29
BUN : 17 : 5-20
creatinine : 0.9 : 0.5-1.3
glucose : 121 : 70-110
total bilirubin : 0.5 : 0.3-1.1
plasma total protein : 9.5 : 6.0-8.0
albumin : 4.4 : 3.4-4.8
AST : 24 : 8-26
alkaline phosphatase : 98 : 89-251
ALT : 31 : 7-46
amylase : 96 : 50-180
That's it. Those are your lab results. What should you do? That's funny, I don't see the little box on the lab report with the diagnosis and treatment plan in it. The lab guys must have left it off of this one. Weird.
So what's the plan, doc? What do you do?
I'll post the rest of this patient's story if anybody wants to read it.
I write in my journal
I heard an interview with the researcher on NPR this morning (recording of the show), and there is no known cause.
The researcher's hypothesis is that the irritation of the tape encourages immune response. One piece of anecdotal evidence supporting that is that some people claimed that other warts elsewhere on the body were also affected to some degree.