Maggots: Coming to a Hospital Near You

Pokinatcha Punk writes "Forget breakthroughs in biotech. According to Yahoo! News maggot's may make their way back into popular medicine. According to the article 'maggots are remarkably efficient at cleaning up infected wounds by eating dead tissue and killing off bacteria that could block the healing process.'"

Comments

repetitive, much?

[lambent]

This 'story' hits the rounds every few months or so. It's distributed only for it's gross-out factor (ewwww, bugs!) and the cool (air-quotes) "maybe all that new-fangled science isn't the be-all-and-end-all" vibe.

I swear, I've read this same thing 20 times before.

Re:repetitive, much?

[biglig2]

In fact, a quick google reveals that this technique has been around since the 1920s.

Cor, 80 years old, just think of how many times this could have been a dupe post...

Re:repetitive, much?

[tolan-b]

> It was a war fought for civil rights. QED: civil war.

Ehm, civil as in pertaining to a city or state, as in a war within a country. Civil rights have nothing to do with the naming of the war.

Re:repetitive, much?

[seminumerical]

Yeah, the US Army Rangers' manual describes how to do it yourself, by exposing the wound to flies that will lay eggs. Of course since you don't get a carefully selected and bred species, you have to pluck out the maggots once it starts to hurt. Many species will eat dead flesh by preference, but move on to living flesh when they run out.

Re:repetitive, much?

[SgtChaireBourne]

It was only later, when the War had dragged on and on, and people (Northerners) were getting tired of it, that he made the war about the ending of slavery; and, even then, he freed slaves only in those states and territories that had rebelled against the Union

Actually that was to play the morality card and get more help from Europe.

Apropos skin color, slavery in most areas, including Europe was not about skin color, but social and economic status. In Denmark in the 1600 and 1700's there was a very fine line between conscript, prisoner, and slave. Going further back, in all the Nordic countries going from the 1500's to the 700's, there were codified rules about slaves, their status and when they could work their own land. The status could change, slaves could become free men and free men could sell themselves into slavery. Most slaves could buy their freedom within four or five years of work.

Anyway, regarding maggots, that and a lot of non-allopathic medicinal knowledge was put on the back burner shortly after the social changes brought on by WWII and improved travel. In continental Europe in the 1400's there was actually a purge of such knowledge and practitioners of such knowledge by the church as part of a consolidation of power. There was a book, Malleus Maleficarum, "The Witches Hammer" on how to find and destroy these socially influential individuals.

maggots only eat dead flesh

[Naikrovek]

.. which is why i've always wondered why they weren't used in medicine.

oh yeah, now i remember, they're freaking disgusting! that's why! BARF

Re:maggots only eat dead flesh

[slughead]

which is why i've always wondered why they weren't used in medicine.

While in britain, I saw a show on bbc about maggots and diabetes patients.

Diabetes can, in some cases, cause flesh to die and maybe get infected.

The brits figured out to grow flies in a sterile environment, and use their offspring (maggots) to clean out the open wounds (sometimes it's not even open yet, just dead).

Wounds are packed with maggots and covered in gause, and the patient is set on their marry way, never actually feeling what's going on.

Maggots also sterilize the area when they feed, making the wounds safe from infection.

When there's nothing left to eat (all the dead flesh is gone), the maggots are dug out, the area is swabbed out, and the wound is sewn shut.

Re:maggots only eat dead flesh

[Detritus]

You have to use the right species. Some species aren't too particular about not eating healthy tissue.

Re:maggots only eat dead flesh

[jeabu]

The maggots I have seen, after feasting on the yummy, rotting flesh, will then burrow under the skin and begin to eat the healthy tissue, too. The key technique used in medicine is to remove the maggots once they have debrided the dead flesh away and before they begin to burrow.

Gee, Thanks

[BigT]

This is JUST what I wanted to read about while eating lunch. Anyone want my stir-fry and rice?

Re:Gee, Thanks

[TFGeditor]

Survival Training Student: "Sir, what is this white stuff in the soup you made from that dead raccoon in this turtle shell?"

Survival Instructor: "That's rice."

Student: "Why is it moving around like that?"

Instructor: "It's WILD rice. Now eat up."

Leeches too.

[jefft]

Don't forget leeches. They're excellent at draining extra blood out of reattached limbs and digits. These stories make the round every couple of years. Next thing you know doctors will start using healing crystals and homeopathy.

Re:Leeches too.

[mactov]

Leeches are useful because their saliva has a powerful anticoagulant, as well as a vasodialator, and they have an efficient (if unattractive) delivery system.

For more on the use of leeches in surgery, you can click here:

http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~mcbstaff/graf/AvHm/MedUse main.htm

but I do not recommend clicking it while eating: rather high on the gross-o-meter.

Pictoral Reference

[fulldecent]

For a reference to this technology, here are some pictures of the process:

• http://entomology.unl.edu/images/blowflies/blowfly mags1.jpg
• http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/PAT/recs/crop/scrnm gt.jpg
• http://www.sids.org.uk/fsid/maggot.jpg
• https://id294.securedata.net/ultimateamerican/Merc hant2/graphics/tshirts/maggot_big.jpg
• http://www.yamagiku.co.jp/pathology/image/201/5.jp g

Maggot biobots

[G4from128k]

Maggots (or some other little parasitic vermiform beastie) would seem to be an excellent starting point for medical biobots. They have all the machinery for motion inside a living body and a neat little tool for slurping up flesh. Perhaps a bit of genetic engineering would give the critters a taste for tumor tissues or fat cells (and an abhorrence for critical tissues such as nerve cells, muscle tissue, or blood vessels).

Re:Maggot biobots

[Bloater]

It is your association between maggots and refuse. People make decisions on where they spend their time and what they consume on the principle of "contamination". Maggots are contaminated by liking refuse, food with maggots in is thus contaminated. Cooking is not felt to be enough to decontaminate. Experiments with dipping cockroaches into orange juice showed that even a thoroughly disinfected (recently deceased) cockroach "contaminates" orange juice by being dipped in it.

I myself will happily rinse a used glass and re-use it, but if it has been put into a dishwasher which has dirty items in it (even if they are nowhere near the glass), I will normally get a fresh glass - I feel it is contaminated, though I know it isn't.

These associations to decide what is a contaminant and how much effort is required to decontaminate is mostly determined by how you perceived your parents reaction to them to be. IE a fishermans son will probably not care about a maggot in his dinner if he can just pull it out (decontamination is trivial as he saw his father happily warm maggots in his mouth).

I intend to try to react according to available scientific evidence in front of my children when I have them (regardless of how I feel about things myself), since it is important that they be able to make more realistic judgements about the world around them than I am capable of. While I *can* react more sensibly than I feel, I want my children to be able to react sensibly without effort so they can confidently be highly effective in their personal business and business business.

And in other news, apostrophe's...

[venomkid]

According to Yahoo! News maggot's may make their...

And in other news, apostrophes are still being used for pluralization... !!!!!@$(*!#(_$

*huffhuff*

Re:Look before you stitch...

[Hallow]

And it's pretty hard to be worse than Mansquito...

How could you miss this in Gladiator?

[monkeyserver.com]

That's where I first learned of it.

"No, they will clean. You will see."

news?

[FidelCatsro]

I seem to remember whatching a BBC documentry on maggots cleaning wounds around 8 or 9 years ago .The story was fairly identical , although the BBC documentry whos name escapes me , went into far more depth , i belive it was tested in a hospital aswell.
I seem to remember the main advantage was the natural anestetic produced by the maggots as they feast on the effected tissue.Extremly gross and would really freak me out i imagine , but its supposed to be amazingly effective and have a far greater rate of recovery.

Patents

[sicking]

This sounds great for developing countries on a tight budget. (Well, medicine seems to be on a tight budget all over the world these days).

Anyone wants to take bets on how long it'll take for some company to create a genetically engineered worm that is slightly more efficient and patents it? And then somehow forces this new worm onto doctors all over the world, for a handsome fee of course.

Britain, Home of the Leg Ulcer

[blunte]

From the article:

Britain alone spends some 600 million pounds ($1.15 billion) a year treating leg ulcers, which affect 1 percent of the population and can persist for years.

What the heck!?

Re:This has to be a record

[Chemisor]

> I remember seeing shows on maggots used to eat
> dead skin off wounds since the late 80s early 90s.

You have such good memory to remember the "gay nineties". I can't seem to remember much of anything before the Great War myself...

Old stuff

[fm6]

I remember reading about war-between-the-states (for some reason it's not PC to call it the Civil War? WTF?) era use of maggots...

"Civil war" is not PC if you're from the south, because it implies that the pro-Confederate people were acting seditiously. Heaven forfend!

Bernard Cornwell, in his novels about the Napoleonic wars, has British soldiers using maggots to treat wounds. If that's at all historical, the practice probably dates back from prehistory, since it would have been taken up the first time somebody noticed the effects of maggots on tissue.

But that's a big "if". Modern medical maggots have been around for a few decades, but they're not something a nineteenth-century soldier would have had access to. They're carefully raised on a sterile broth, because maggots in the wild carry some really nasty germs. Putting wild maggots in a wound would be asking for a really bad infection. Which, in the pre-antibiotic era, was a death sentence.

The War of Northern Agression.

[UranusReallyHertz]

...Is what I've heard it called by some confederate sympahtisers. Very expressive name.