Well, the same folks who brought you raging infections with antibiotic-resistant strains of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria over in Britain by not keeping hospitals clean have come up with a cure for the flesh-eating bugs. But you won't like it.
Maggots have been successfully used to treat patients with the superbug MRSA, according to scientists.
In a preliminary trial, 12 of 13 patients with wounds infected with the potentially deadly bug were cured using larvae of the greenbottle fly Lucilia Sericata.
Because maggots eat dead and decaying flesh while leaving healthy tissue intact, "larval therapy" has been used by doctors since at least as early as the Napoleonic Wars, and the technique is still taught to US Army Special Forces medics.
The patients in the study, aged between 18 and 80, were cleared of the infection in an average of three weeks, compared to the 28 weeks needed for conventional treatment with anti-MRSA lotions.
Researchers used maggots to treat diabetic patients who had contracted MRSA in foot ulcers, but they said the findings were likely to apply to all patients who contracted the superbug in wounds.
The technique may be taught to US Army Special Forces medics as something to use in a last resort situation where decent, clean hospital facilities are not available but….. Oh, wait. Maybe that's the answer, then. Britain is down to last resorts.
Still think socialized medicine is a good idea?
Fight flesh-eating bugs with flesh-eating bugs, I always say.
Maggots are good! I remember reading a memoir of a soldier wounded and captured by the Chinese in the Korean war. His wound was going bad until the maggots moved in and cleaned it out. I think they dine well on gangrenous tissue also, but I don’t recall where I came across that little item.
It’s even better if you don’t contract the infection to begin with, though. Maggots are kind of a last ditch kind of thing.