August 31, 2010 • 28 mins
Maggots have a distinctive (and, some would say, repulsive) appearance. But throughout history doctors and healers have used maggots to treat ulcers and wounds. In this episode, Allison and Robert take a closer look at maggots and maggot therapy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison I don't know, the science editor at
how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
(00:23):
science rider at how stuff works dot com. And today's
podcast we're talking about maggots. All right, Maybe you listen
to our last podcast. We're kind of on a role
with perhaps animals that people consider not so attractive. Yeah,
would be grossed out by. Yeah, we were going to
do one podcast about both maggots and leeches, but each bloodsucker. Um,
(00:44):
and they're not both blood suckers, but be each creature
turned out to be interesting enough in its own right
to deserve its own podcast, right, And and maggots, I
have to say I've I've softened a little bit towards
towards maggots just because they are so vital. You know
what it was. It was the podcast we did on composting,
which is one of my favorite ones that we've done
so far, And it's just a realization that they're necessary.
(01:05):
And Okay, so I can prove to you that my
attitude has changed towards maggots because in fact, we had
a trash incident. Oh yeah, you had some maggots at
the house. We keep our trash outside. There was a
period where unfortunately the trash did not get to go out,
and you know, some stuff was was born in that
in that short time span, and I unfortunately opened the
(01:25):
lid to the trash can, and of course I saw
all the all the maggots. It was a little bit traumatic,
but it wasn't as traumatic had it been, you know,
before the composting podcast. I think I don't know if
I was ever really grossed out, but like you know,
as a kid, you know, I kind of lived in
the country and we would keen into maggots. No, but
there would be like dead animals and you'd see some
(01:47):
something crawling around in it, and you know, it was
just it was yeah, and I know and and I mean,
I guess having watched a fair amount of horror, like
occasionally maggots will show up. But the most amusing thing
is like sometimes like really cheap productions, they couldn't actually
get maggots, I guess, which seems like I don't know,
it seems like, yeah, I just think ahead and put
some meat out, you know, and then pick them out
(02:08):
with tweezers, right, but I don't know. It's like they
will get some other type of worm to pretend to
be maggots. So like if you've ever seen maggots, you're like,
those aren't baggots, sort of like there's some sort of
earthworm or something, you know, and then they'll use like
a sound effect for the worm to make it sound
sound like they're yelling or something. I don't know any rate. Um,
you know, we're talking about maggot therapy, maggot therapy to
(02:29):
get on track, and you know, in a world where
public image counts a lot, maggot therapy is one therapy
that really suffered a fall, but it's starting to come
back in Triumph. Yeah, though it does still doesn't sound good,
Like I think they need out like a snazzier name
for it. Well there are. I think some people call
it um larval therapy. That sounds a lot better. Um,
(02:51):
there's a more technical name. I think maggot debridemant therapy,
debriding just meaning the removal of dead tissue. I still
don't think that's a you good seller. Yeah, right right,
you gotta get rid of the maggot in the title
if you want to do an elevator pitch and sell
your therapy to a million dollar venture capitalists. So anyway,
back in the nineties, when antibatics first came onto the
(03:15):
medicinal scene, maggots, you know, that's really when they fell
out of favor. I mean, who's gonna want, you know,
a little grub, a larval fly to be you know,
investigating your wounds when you can just popping anti batic.
And so they're back now and they're hungry. So okay,
what's a maggot again? You guys know this, but for
the sake of it, we'll just go over it real fast. It's,
(03:36):
you know, a soft bodied, legless grub. It's a larva
of a dip terrorist insect. In other words, it's a
fly larva. It's an immature fly. Okay, here's something that
I came across. And there's all some sorts of good
stuff that we come across while we're researching this podcast,
and we give as much of that research as we
can to you guys. But the second definition of maggot
is a fantastic or eccentric idea. I've never heard of
(03:58):
that either, but I like the idea of you have
you using it more like, you know, like we'll come
up to um, you know, your editor in chief. Yeah,
we'll be like, hey, con I got aa roll maggot
here for you. But what do you say we do
an entire article about, you know, something about um. You know,
I think you would totally roll with it. So what
are you used? What are maggots used for in maggot therapy? Well,
(04:21):
as it turns out, we have a pretty good article
on that's written by freelancer Tom Chef, and mainly it's
it's cleaning wounds. It's kind of like they like to
eat really gross flesh stuff, and so if you're in
a situation we're like, hey, what are we gonna do
with this gross fleshy stuff we need removed? Hey you
guys want to eat it? Hop on? You know. Well,
in particularly, they have a predilection for for dead tissue. Yeah,
(04:42):
they're really good at removing dead tissue and unless things
get out of hand, like they're pretty good about like
just eat the dead sticking to the dead tissue. Yeah yeah,
that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, So what kind of wouldn't trust
like a like a buzzard with that? You know? Heck, now,
like hey, guys just pick it the the rotten stuff,
but leave the rest of the leg alone, and they'd
be like, oh yeah sure. So. Um. In particular, they
(05:07):
come in handy. Magot therapy comes in handy for traumatic
or post surgical wounds that just won't heal. Um. But
important note to doctors here considering this UM, I was
reading that wounds with tunnels are kind of hiding spots
for the maggots aren't necessarily good candidates for this particular
kind of therapy. Also important note to doctors if you're
listening to our podcast and using that to decide how
(05:28):
are you going to treat your patients, just really reconsider
how you're going about things. Also interesting was I found
that there's a very small steady uh participants were number
thirteen in all, and I found that people with mrs
A contaminated wounds were cured using nothing but maggots. Okay,
and m r s A. Of course, Um, that's the
type of infection that's resistant to certain antibiotics. So that
(05:50):
would be you know, a big deal, especially when this
is like when somebody gets like an antibiotic resistant staff
infection type of thing, going yes, yes, yeah, that is
exactly what m R. S A is. So, so it
would prove handy in that case, and a lot of
times that megat therapy is going to come in handy
when you have stuff like ulcers. And oddly enough, these
ulcers mainly are are located on your lower extremities. So
(06:12):
there's one called a venus stasis ulcer. Now this one
is that this is the one correct move if I'm wrong,
But it's kind of like if I'm standing in one
place for a while and I feel like I need
to shift to move around. It might be because I
had too much coffee, but it could be because, like
my body is telling the neuropathic foot ulcer and we
will get to that in a second. That's nerve damage.
Uh No, So the venus stasis ulcer is. You're gonna
find these below in the knee, especially in the niche,
(06:34):
that tiny little cute niche just above the ankle. And
and they're common in patients who have medical charts filled
with stuff like leg smelling and vericous veins or you
know a history of blood clots in the in the
leg veins. You were jumping the gun. But yes, indeed,
the neuropathic foot ulcer is also a candidate for maggot therapy.
(06:55):
And for the love of God, I know you will,
but don't link these up in Google images. It is. Oh,
that's tough. When it's stuck with me, it's steared in
my brain. The neuropathic foot ulcer that if you, if
you have one of these, by all means, take a
picture of it and send it to it. Like somebody
didn't their feet with the hood feline hookworms. The person
sent us a photo canine hookwar canine hookworms in human feet.
(07:18):
I can still picture that was a cool picture. Yeah,
I can still see it too. It's burned into my mind.
So these neuropathic foot ulcers, like you can probably guess
these occurred to Jude to nerve damage and um. Like
Robert was getting at, having intec nerves is a pretty
handy thing. We like. We all like having intec nerves.
You know, it helps us tell you when to shift
(07:38):
position if you're standing on your feet, the nerves and
your your lower extremities. And if you lose that information,
then you're gonna lose awareness as to what's going on
down there, right, and you can have some crazy things
start happening to your feet. Maybe you get some cuts,
they appear and you don't notice, maybe get a blister
you don't notice, and it just gets you know, it
starts festering, and they progress and they progress, and then
(07:59):
you have serious infection on your hands, which leads us
to the next kind of ulcer that Maggot therapy is
is being used for. And these are called pressure ulcers
ak a bed soyces. Yeah, these are the ones you
get if you your laid up for a while. Yeah,
And pressure ulcers also affect another population that's not bedridden,
and that would be diabetics. So a little little known
(08:23):
to me, diabetics and ulcers are have a pretty significant history.
Well I I was familiar with, you know, like some
a lot of times diabetics and up having to go
in for amputation. Right. Well, so chronic conditions like diabetes
are different vascular diseases. They mess up your circulation, they
mess up your blood flow, and um, well, we'll get
(08:43):
to the maggot diabetic thing in a sec. But let's
talk about this pressure ulcer just so we can get
into the maggot therapy. What's happening. We're gonna walk you
through the steps involved in a pressure ulcer starts off.
It's a red spot on your skin. Press on it,
maybe it doesn't turn white, so maybe you know some
things up, but you probably don't notice it. This is
stage one of the pressure ulcer. Next up, you get
(09:05):
your open sore going on and the areas around the store.
They start to start to get a little angry, you know,
the ulcer starts to spread its madness. And next comes
the crater. And this is pretty much um. You know,
you can kind of see a crater in your skin
where the tissue has started to to break down and
(09:28):
go to heck basically, and this is when you need
to spend in the maggots. Well, eventually, pressure ulcers escalate
to the point that they become so deep that of
course they damage surrounding muscle and bone, and they can
even spread to tendons and joints. And yes, this is
this is when the magot therapy might be called in.
And before that, a lot of people only have the
option of amputation. You know, the infection got so bad
(09:50):
that you're faced with, well, we have to amputate that
that leg, the toe, the foot. Yeah, because what you
all you have are these big surgical devices and what
you need is a little bitty surgeon or a team
of little bitty surgeons right to go in maggots. Indeed, yeah,
and it's a pretty it is a pretty significant problem
for diabetics once you consider that there are twenty three
(10:10):
million in the United States according to the American Diabetes Association,
and you're looking about seventy thousand amputations uh diet for
diabetics occurring every year according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. A lot do you like your face?
Do you like having all your body parts right? As
we discussed in the Prosthetics podcast, I do like my
(10:30):
limbs and right right. So a lot of us, I
would imagine, would be interested in avoiding amputation. Apart from
that one special group of people. Do you remember that
the actively stick in ahead though, well, there there, there,
they have problems. Yes, yes, they do have problems. Um.
So anyway, we get these people who are faced with
(10:51):
amputation or or what well, as it turns out, or
maggot therapy and really important note that I think we
should emphasize here it's not a is to replace existing therapies,
like You're not gonna maggots are never going to take
the place of surgery. They're never going to take the
place of antibiotics. Yeah, this isn't like some sort of
quack technique where it's like like we really wish that,
you know, Mary would go to an actual doctor, but
(11:13):
she's going to that maggot physician. No, it's it's it's
not a first line defense. And another thing is that
when we were researching this podcast, I happen to find
out that there's a substance called hydrogels and they're capable
of performing a lot of the functions that maggots can
do in maggot therapy. So and some of the research
seemed to indicate that hydrogels and maggot therapy had about
(11:35):
equally effective utility. And and you know, so hydrogels are
without the maggots, so people very well might opt for those.
But let's get into the process. Let's let's release the maggots,
shall we. Okay, So, yeah, so we've got this putrid
area that needs a clean up. We've got some some
some dead tissue that needs to be cleared away from
(11:56):
the live tissue. Yeah, so first that you gotta get
the maggots. But don't don't go gathering up the maggots yourself. Yeah,
you want some farm rates, right, don't slather them, you know,
willy nilly all over the wound. Although I did read
one one article that said patients could be taught to
administer this treatment themselves and then when they were done
(12:17):
with the magaziners, just toss them in the garbage and
be done with it. Yeah, they probably would would like that, right, Yeah. Um,
I imagine the danger is that you probably need to
have a strong stomach. And then of course you could
get the ratio wrong, because, like we said, there is
a particular ratio you're looking for, and in fact, the
general rules thumb is that you're gonna want about eight
maggots per square centimeter of flesh that you want them
(12:40):
to consume, otherwise they go a little crazy. Right, Well,
they're gonna get hungry, right, So you don't want to overpopulate.
Don't overpopulate. But let's let's get back to the process.
You gotta have the maggots. Yeah, yeah, So you're gonna
want to have the maggots, and you want to have again,
the right maggots because there are a lot of different
(13:01):
flies in the world and uh, and all of them
have larva, but you're generally the most favored of variety
is the green blow fot fly, which is, uh, do
you want to take a shot at the I was
gonna give it Phoenicia Sarah Cotta. Sounds actually kind of tasty,
sounds like an Italian dessert. Yeah. And these are growing
(13:21):
to get in a lab, in a lab and a
disease free environment, and they're shipped in a sterile containers,
probably overnight. Yeah. Alright, so the maggot show up, they're
ready for business. Well, you've got to have an open
wound of some sort, and preferably that wound is clean,
so open water and wash it out, et cetera. Okay,
so keep part of the process here, because a lot
of us are not at all cool with maggots just
(13:44):
you know, wandering around. Our open source is a sedative.
Often patients who choose to undergo maggot therapy will be
administered a sedative, a heavy one. Yeah. And when you
first mentioned this, I was thinking like, oh, these guys
are kind of WIMPs. They just don't want it, to
want to feel like they're you know, a little larva
calling on them. But then the whole thing is that
they're they're crawling on air and very sensitive areas like inflamed,
(14:06):
you know, gross areas that you know, So it's like
pressure on a wound. So of course you don't want
to feel that, right, They're getting fat off of, you know,
eating your necrotic tissue, and it's putting pressure on the wound.
And in fact, patients have reported that maggot therapy can
be more painful than other kinds of therapy. Interesting, Yeah,
so I mean you really want to not be aware
(14:26):
of it, I would think. So the fact that it's hurting,
you know, and you're you know that there are maggots
in there, that would that would sort of add But again,
if you were using vultures, the sedation would have to
be a lot heavier, right, So so no vultures. Okay,
So you're gonna add these live maggots to the wound,
and like with leeches, um, you're gonna gotta you gotta
steal them off. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta. You don't
(14:48):
want the running all over the place. You gotta direct
them to the task. And so you're gonna steal it
off and then you're going to cover the wound with
a bandage. To keep it in place. And you can
also um as opposed, if you're a posed to having
them kind of crawling freely, you can put them in
a bio bag or this sealed nylon bag. And of
course um necessity is the mother of all inventions. So
(15:10):
there's a company now, Monarch Labs, that's come out with
a special maggot dressing. It has a nice name too. Yeah,
I think I think there was some of that in
the fridge here at work until the name threw it away. Yeah,
the Paul Newman variety too, so I'm sure it was healthy.
But you know O right. So this was not salad dressing,
but rather wound dressing, and it's called love Flap Flap Flap.
(15:34):
It's a nice French name. Brings an element of class
to magot therapy which needs a little bit of that. So,
according to the company, the first pre manufactured cage dressing
available for the US market. That's what it is. The
single piece of flap Maggot confinement dressing is intended to
prevent medicinal maggots from leading the wound before the treatment
of scheduled to enter and of course reduce the time
(15:56):
and cost necessary to confine them to the wound. So
you can look that up over Monarch Labs if you yea,
are you saying a picture of this, right? I did. Yeah.
It kind of looks like a sticker with a part
that peels off, and in the part that peels off,
you'd see the wound. Yeah. It's kind of like if
you're painting a design on something, you need like a stencil, right, yeah, yeah,
it's kind of like a maggot stencil. So yeah, so
(16:18):
in a few days time, you change from place the
bandage in the maggots, uh, and then you flush them
out with probably like a saline solution or something. But wait, wait,
do you miss the most important part? You miss what's
happening in the mouth. Yes, what they're doing, well, they're yeah,
they're eating up that decaying flesh, and they're clearing the
place of bacteria. At least they're capable of clearing the
(16:39):
place of a lot of different species of bacteria again,
because they get these tiny little mouths, you know, going
after the little bits there. And in the whole time
they're using fluids too, right, they're turning to some enzymes
for help with breaking down the dead tissue further and
their stimulating cell growth there. This is pretty cool. They're
also excreting an antibacterial agent. Yeah, I imagine we excrete
(17:00):
an antibacterial agent. Just imagine possibilities. But but yeah, this
is this kind of boils down to what I've read before,
like people talking about how maggots are are really like
they're they're kind of clean. They're pretty clean organisms. You know,
they they're in the pig. Yeah, yeah, they may be
in gross situations, but you know, there's there's nothing wrong.
(17:21):
This is also why the maggot I believe. I read
something a while back talking about if we were ever
to send astronauts to Mars, you know, a long space flight,
but if you could get get them to eat maggots,
astronauts astronauts the eat maggots, and that would be awesome
because maggots, I mean, they're they're they're larva, and they're
all they do is fatten up and get ready for
the next stage of their life. So they have a
lot of like protein in them, and they're like very nutritious.
(17:44):
That's why like chickens, chickens will eat the heck out
of maggots, you know, their whole like their whole like
farming operations that depend on like like making sure that
like the chickens eat the maggots. Or I think there's
some like tapia farming um processes out there where like
the Seriously, it's like I remember hearing about this words
like the telapia, You harvest the telapia made, then you
let flies land on the leftovers, maggots grow and you
(18:08):
get the maggots, and you fee the maggots the telapia,
et cetera. So that's nice, it's very efficient. So yeah,
maggots basically they just need a little bit of a
new campaign, a new new pr campaign to revise their image,
don't you think. Yeah, because like the treatments are really
pretty cheap, right, it's like a hundred bucks. Yeah, it
(18:30):
can be a hundred bucks, and so that's a lot
less than surgery and probably your insurance company would be
more psyched to, you know, to shout a hundred bucks
than the cost involved in surgery. Yeah, put that in
the ad campaign. I can like see like the the
the TV ad with like you know, people walking through
a field and they start having a heart to heart
about the maggots. So the treatment can last as long
(18:53):
as ten days, and it's important to note that patients
may also be taking antibotics while the magot therapy is going.
So let's talk about it. You guys may think we're
a little crazy. You might not have heard this before.
You're thinking, no, I don't buy it, Robert Allison, they're
sort of out there. Yeah, because we've talked. It's kind
of like the whole thing with the hookworm treatment. The
hookworm treatment was is still considered out there, but well
(19:13):
we only mentioned that in passing. Yeah, but it's gotten
a lot of but it's gotten a lot of coverage
elsewhere therapy. You just did a blog post on it. Yeah. Yeah.
So so there are some pretty major supporters or at
least people who don't object to mega therapy, one of
them being the US Food and Drug Administration. Yeah, they
came around to it in two thousand and four, the
same year that they were decided to be okay with
(19:34):
the leeches. It was a whole banner year. The Legion
Maggot Council really made some some some progress that here,
and more recently, November two thousand nine, you had the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the US revising
their billing Code guidelines UH in an effort to help
patients get reimbursed for megat therapy. Health Canada, the Canadian
(19:58):
Public Health Agency has gone so far is to classify
medical maggots as drugs. So, of course downsides of therapy,
there's side effects, there are you know, other things that
you need to consider when you're considering your overall health.
So maga therapy limited research out there. So I was
reading an article in the Journal of the Canadian Medical
(20:19):
Association c m A J I believe, and the articles
mentioned mentioning that there are only two randomized clinical trials
on maga therapy that have ever been published. So that's
kind of kind of a small amount of information out there,
and a lot of these studies, um that I was encountering,
you know, pretty small little studies done here and there.
(20:41):
There's also, of course the you factor of magot therapy. Yeah. Yeah,
like we touched on it's like it's hard to get
past the fact that it does involve letting little tiny
larva's much on your flesh. And you also mentioned like
some people were also like concerned, like, oh, what if
the maggots escape their enclosure and someone sees one on
the or But what if you're going to your doctor's
(21:02):
office and he's going to give you your magatherapy, you know,
some escape You're you're in the waiting room, you're, you know,
scanning your copy of People. All of a sudden, you know,
maggot crawls across your foot. Maybe a maggot crawls across
Katie Holmes's I while you're looking at the cover of People.
I mean, but I think I don't think that would
be good. It would not be good, but it comes
(21:23):
it's i mean, cleanliness goes hand in hand with with
proper medicine. So it's kind of like you also wouldn't
want to go in to get your check up and
be like, oh my god, somebody lants to boil on
this table and it's still yucky there, No, because if
they would clean it up, you know. So this is true. Now, granted,
a maggot unlike boil, plus we can actually conceivably crawl
out of a room or something, but still it's a
(21:45):
you know, you know, but it's still they can do
things to keep it clean. And in fact, doctors do things,
do do things to to keep their offices clean. And
we thank them for that. Okay, So another downside, mag
they die easily. Oh yeah, yeah, theah they're they're not
particularly long lived, so you gotta have a good stock
of them. Yeah, and you can't just again, you can't
(22:06):
just go up on the roof and like throw down
a Hamburger patty and come back in a couple of hours.
You know. It's like you need to get them again
through through actual um medicinal maggot providers. So yeah, yeah.
And lastly, some bacteria, some species of bacteria may thwart
maggots and leave them dead um if you send them
into cleaner infected wound. And one of the species in
(22:27):
question is called Pseudomonas arruginosa. I believe also sounds kind
of taste all. They all sound like something I would
get an Italian restaurant. I'll have the Pseudomonis of organosa please. Yeah,
with the caesar salad. I think that one is more
of a red sauce, and the one we named earlier
was white. And then, of course maggots painful, can be
painful when you're having this treatment. So I feel like
(22:49):
we should end this podcast on the question of whether
you do it. Would you do it, Would you undergo
magat therapy? Yeah, I mean definitely. If it was a
situation where people are like, hey, we may have to
amputate and you know, but we want to try maggots first,
I would be like, by all means, let's try maggots.
You know. I would not necessarily be opposed to the
vultures if that were. Okay, vulture is no place maggot therapy. Legit.
(23:12):
Vultures just is just me talking about it. But no,
it's I would definitely give the maggot option ago if
it were something, you know, if it were recommended to
me by my doctor. Yeah, I think I would too. Yeah.
I would like to ask producer Matt. He's not allowed
to talk, it's not we can't see him either. I
(23:34):
wonder if producer Matt would do it, would you? Yeah, yeah,
that would do it. Yeah, yeah, Matt has answered in
the affirmative. So all three of us would do it
if if we were presented with the right situation, would
you though, so right in and tell us. We'd love
to hear from you. We we'd love to hear what
you think about maggot therapy or just maggots in general.
You know, yeah, those impressions of maggots one of the
(23:56):
things for me, Like we've we talked about leeches in
another podcast we recorded day and we talked about maggots
and neither of these are really like gross me out
because they seemed very task based. There's there are definite
things they're out there achieving, like that that maggot he's
gonna eat until he turns into a fly, and more
power to him that leech, that leach wants to drink blood,
and you know, carry on. But I've always been really
sickened out by garden slugs because I'm like, what the
(24:18):
what is this for? What is it doing? Unless it's
like feeding off of just my utter revulsion at it's
like fat sliminess. I think that's an unfair characterization of
the garden slugs. Yeah, well, I challenge you or anybody
to tell me what good they're doing, all right, So
challenges out. Send us an email Science Stuff at how
stuff first dot com, maggots slugs. We'd love to hear
(24:38):
from you. And uh, we got a little listener Ley'd
like to share with you. Today we have we have
Brian and he ran in to talk to us about
um the podcast. He said, Hey, fourteen and just got
(25:01):
back from a one year trip to Japan. I really
like the podcast and it helped a lot in plane
right back. I bet it did. That's one long uh
one long podcast. That's one long plane ride. Yeah. I
wonder how many episodes of stuff from the Science lo
have you listened to? So, Ryan said, I listened to
your smelling podcast, and the Smell a Vision reminded me
of something I saw in the Japanese Museum. There was
(25:24):
a computer that allows you to play a bunch of videos,
mostly cooking related, and smells would come out of the
computer related to what you're watching. Have you guys heard
of this? I think, yeah, I think I have heard
of this. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I wonder what kind
of smells. Well, you're very limited in what you can watch, like, like,
you know, even there are some great things up there,
I wouldn't necessarily want to watch, say The Seven Samurai,
(25:46):
you know, within Smell a Vision or you know, or
pretty much any film that I like. I can't think
of one that would smell really good. I don't know.
Emily might smell good. Oh, Emily, that would definitely smell good. Yeah,
she's so cute, mean, not just her, but like, you know,
they're in a cafe. It's Paris. I don't know. Yeah, agreed.
There's French perfume, there's flowers buffing through the air. There's
(26:09):
the smell of a nice you know, French roast. Yeah,
that's a good smell. Speaking of perfume, I don't know
about the movie perfume. Like same for the actual perfume.
Probably smell really awesome, but not so much the Paris gutters,
you know. No. Hey, And on a more serious note,
we also heard from Joshua and Joshua is a PhD
candidate UM, and he read in to talk to us
(26:30):
about our recent Evolution and Action podcast, and he wanted
to talk to us about something that I said. Actually,
I was talking a little bit about antibiotics and um,
just my parental fear and Joshua and Allison mentioned that
as a parent, was troubling to give her child antibatics
because she feared that her child might evolve resistance to
(26:50):
the antabatic And actually that was in a statement, So
thank you josh for correcting me. I just wanted to
point out that her child wouldn't evolve resistance to the
antabatic because first, the target of the animotic is, of course,
the bacterial population living inside the child, not the child itself. Second,
and more important, evolution can't happen within a single individual,
the idea that individual can change its attributes over its
(27:11):
lifetime to suit a set up environmental circumstances with champ
blah blah blah. So a lot to say, interesting stuff
to say. Um and I really appreciate that correction because
it's an important distinction to make. I mean, it's not
my my daughter evolving resistance. It's you know, the bacteria
population in her, which you know decided it didn't like
particularly antibiotic, and it's scared the heck out of me
(27:32):
as a parent. But there are options out there, and
it's pritty. It's a it's important distinction to make. I think,
what do you think? Yeah, totally. Yeah, let us know
when we slip up and we'll read the corrections in
the air. Don't just talk about it's an alley or
it worn't and be like that Allison and Robert. You
should hear what they said the other day. You know,
it'll clear the air. Yeah, we're happy to do so.
(27:55):
Um So, yeah, I think that about wraps it up.
Thanks for listening to us, and if you want to
hang out on Facebook, Twitter, we're there too. Yeah. On
Facebook we're stuff in the Science Lab and on Twitter
we are lab stuff alright, rock on. Thanks for listening.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
(28:17):
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Com home page
Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison I don't know, the science editor at
how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
(00:23):
science rider at how stuff works dot com. And today's
podcast we're talking about maggots. All right, Maybe you listen
to our last podcast. We're kind of on a role
with perhaps animals that people consider not so attractive. Yeah,
would be grossed out by. Yeah, we were going to
do one podcast about both maggots and leeches, but each bloodsucker. Um,
(00:44):
and they're not both blood suckers, but be each creature
turned out to be interesting enough in its own right
to deserve its own podcast, right, And and maggots, I
have to say I've I've softened a little bit towards
towards maggots just because they are so vital. You know
what it was. It was the podcast we did on composting,
which is one of my favorite ones that we've done
so far, And it's just a realization that they're necessary.
(01:05):
And Okay, so I can prove to you that my
attitude has changed towards maggots because in fact, we had
a trash incident. Oh yeah, you had some maggots at
the house. We keep our trash outside. There was a
period where unfortunately the trash did not get to go out,
and you know, some stuff was was born in that
in that short time span, and I unfortunately opened the
(01:25):
lid to the trash can, and of course I saw
all the all the maggots. It was a little bit traumatic,
but it wasn't as traumatic had it been, you know,
before the composting podcast. I think I don't know if
I was ever really grossed out, but like you know,
as a kid, you know, I kind of lived in
the country and we would keen into maggots. No, but
there would be like dead animals and you'd see some
(01:47):
something crawling around in it, and you know, it was
just it was yeah, and I know and and I mean,
I guess having watched a fair amount of horror, like
occasionally maggots will show up. But the most amusing thing
is like sometimes like really cheap productions, they couldn't actually
get maggots, I guess, which seems like I don't know,
it seems like, yeah, I just think ahead and put
some meat out, you know, and then pick them out
(02:08):
with tweezers, right, but I don't know. It's like they
will get some other type of worm to pretend to
be maggots. So like if you've ever seen maggots, you're like,
those aren't baggots, sort of like there's some sort of
earthworm or something, you know, and then they'll use like
a sound effect for the worm to make it sound
sound like they're yelling or something. I don't know any rate. Um,
you know, we're talking about maggot therapy, maggot therapy to
(02:29):
get on track, and you know, in a world where
public image counts a lot, maggot therapy is one therapy
that really suffered a fall, but it's starting to come
back in Triumph. Yeah, though it does still doesn't sound good,
Like I think they need out like a snazzier name
for it. Well there are. I think some people call
it um larval therapy. That sounds a lot better. Um,
(02:51):
there's a more technical name. I think maggot debridemant therapy,
debriding just meaning the removal of dead tissue. I still
don't think that's a you good seller. Yeah, right right,
you gotta get rid of the maggot in the title
if you want to do an elevator pitch and sell
your therapy to a million dollar venture capitalists. So anyway,
back in the nineties, when antibatics first came onto the
(03:15):
medicinal scene, maggots, you know, that's really when they fell
out of favor. I mean, who's gonna want, you know,
a little grub, a larval fly to be you know,
investigating your wounds when you can just popping anti batic.
And so they're back now and they're hungry. So okay,
what's a maggot again? You guys know this, but for
the sake of it, we'll just go over it real fast. It's,
(03:36):
you know, a soft bodied, legless grub. It's a larva
of a dip terrorist insect. In other words, it's a
fly larva. It's an immature fly. Okay, here's something that
I came across. And there's all some sorts of good
stuff that we come across while we're researching this podcast,
and we give as much of that research as we
can to you guys. But the second definition of maggot
is a fantastic or eccentric idea. I've never heard of
(03:58):
that either, but I like the idea of you have
you using it more like, you know, like we'll come
up to um, you know, your editor in chief. Yeah,
we'll be like, hey, con I got aa roll maggot
here for you. But what do you say we do
an entire article about, you know, something about um. You know,
I think you would totally roll with it. So what
are you used? What are maggots used for in maggot therapy? Well,
(04:21):
as it turns out, we have a pretty good article
on that's written by freelancer Tom Chef, and mainly it's
it's cleaning wounds. It's kind of like they like to
eat really gross flesh stuff, and so if you're in
a situation we're like, hey, what are we gonna do
with this gross fleshy stuff we need removed? Hey you
guys want to eat it? Hop on? You know. Well,
in particularly, they have a predilection for for dead tissue. Yeah,
(04:42):
they're really good at removing dead tissue and unless things
get out of hand, like they're pretty good about like
just eat the dead sticking to the dead tissue. Yeah yeah,
that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, So what kind of wouldn't trust
like a like a buzzard with that? You know? Heck, now,
like hey, guys just pick it the the rotten stuff,
but leave the rest of the leg alone, and they'd
be like, oh yeah sure. So. Um. In particular, they
(05:07):
come in handy. Magot therapy comes in handy for traumatic
or post surgical wounds that just won't heal. Um. But
important note to doctors here considering this UM, I was
reading that wounds with tunnels are kind of hiding spots
for the maggots aren't necessarily good candidates for this particular
kind of therapy. Also important note to doctors if you're
listening to our podcast and using that to decide how
(05:28):
are you going to treat your patients, just really reconsider
how you're going about things. Also interesting was I found
that there's a very small steady uh participants were number
thirteen in all, and I found that people with mrs
A contaminated wounds were cured using nothing but maggots. Okay,
and m r s A. Of course, Um, that's the
type of infection that's resistant to certain antibiotics. So that
(05:50):
would be you know, a big deal, especially when this
is like when somebody gets like an antibiotic resistant staff
infection type of thing, going yes, yes, yeah, that is
exactly what m R. S A is. So, so it
would prove handy in that case, and a lot of
times that megat therapy is going to come in handy
when you have stuff like ulcers. And oddly enough, these
ulcers mainly are are located on your lower extremities. So
(06:12):
there's one called a venus stasis ulcer. Now this one
is that this is the one correct move if I'm wrong,
But it's kind of like if I'm standing in one
place for a while and I feel like I need
to shift to move around. It might be because I
had too much coffee, but it could be because, like
my body is telling the neuropathic foot ulcer and we
will get to that in a second. That's nerve damage.
Uh No, So the venus stasis ulcer is. You're gonna
find these below in the knee, especially in the niche,
(06:34):
that tiny little cute niche just above the ankle. And
and they're common in patients who have medical charts filled
with stuff like leg smelling and vericous veins or you
know a history of blood clots in the in the
leg veins. You were jumping the gun. But yes, indeed,
the neuropathic foot ulcer is also a candidate for maggot therapy.
(06:55):
And for the love of God, I know you will,
but don't link these up in Google images. It is. Oh,
that's tough. When it's stuck with me, it's steared in
my brain. The neuropathic foot ulcer that if you, if
you have one of these, by all means, take a
picture of it and send it to it. Like somebody
didn't their feet with the hood feline hookworms. The person
sent us a photo canine hookwar canine hookworms in human feet.
(07:18):
I can still picture that was a cool picture. Yeah,
I can still see it too. It's burned into my mind.
So these neuropathic foot ulcers, like you can probably guess
these occurred to Jude to nerve damage and um. Like
Robert was getting at, having intec nerves is a pretty
handy thing. We like. We all like having intec nerves.
You know, it helps us tell you when to shift
(07:38):
position if you're standing on your feet, the nerves and
your your lower extremities. And if you lose that information,
then you're gonna lose awareness as to what's going on
down there, right, and you can have some crazy things
start happening to your feet. Maybe you get some cuts,
they appear and you don't notice, maybe get a blister
you don't notice, and it just gets you know, it
starts festering, and they progress and they progress, and then
(07:59):
you have serious infection on your hands, which leads us
to the next kind of ulcer that Maggot therapy is
is being used for. And these are called pressure ulcers
ak a bed soyces. Yeah, these are the ones you
get if you your laid up for a while. Yeah,
And pressure ulcers also affect another population that's not bedridden,
and that would be diabetics. So a little little known
(08:23):
to me, diabetics and ulcers are have a pretty significant history.
Well I I was familiar with, you know, like some
a lot of times diabetics and up having to go
in for amputation. Right. Well, so chronic conditions like diabetes
are different vascular diseases. They mess up your circulation, they
mess up your blood flow, and um, well, we'll get
(08:43):
to the maggot diabetic thing in a sec. But let's
talk about this pressure ulcer just so we can get
into the maggot therapy. What's happening. We're gonna walk you
through the steps involved in a pressure ulcer starts off.
It's a red spot on your skin. Press on it,
maybe it doesn't turn white, so maybe you know some
things up, but you probably don't notice it. This is
stage one of the pressure ulcer. Next up, you get
(09:05):
your open sore going on and the areas around the store.
They start to start to get a little angry, you know,
the ulcer starts to spread its madness. And next comes
the crater. And this is pretty much um. You know,
you can kind of see a crater in your skin
where the tissue has started to to break down and
(09:28):
go to heck basically, and this is when you need
to spend in the maggots. Well, eventually, pressure ulcers escalate
to the point that they become so deep that of
course they damage surrounding muscle and bone, and they can
even spread to tendons and joints. And yes, this is
this is when the magot therapy might be called in.
And before that, a lot of people only have the
option of amputation. You know, the infection got so bad
(09:50):
that you're faced with, well, we have to amputate that
that leg, the toe, the foot. Yeah, because what you
all you have are these big surgical devices and what
you need is a little bitty surgeon or a team
of little bitty surgeons right to go in maggots. Indeed, yeah,
and it's a pretty it is a pretty significant problem
for diabetics once you consider that there are twenty three
(10:10):
million in the United States according to the American Diabetes Association,
and you're looking about seventy thousand amputations uh diet for
diabetics occurring every year according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. A lot do you like your face?
Do you like having all your body parts right? As
we discussed in the Prosthetics podcast, I do like my
(10:30):
limbs and right right. So a lot of us, I
would imagine, would be interested in avoiding amputation. Apart from
that one special group of people. Do you remember that
the actively stick in ahead though, well, there there, there,
they have problems. Yes, yes, they do have problems. Um.
So anyway, we get these people who are faced with
(10:51):
amputation or or what well, as it turns out, or
maggot therapy and really important note that I think we
should emphasize here it's not a is to replace existing therapies,
like You're not gonna maggots are never going to take
the place of surgery. They're never going to take the
place of antibiotics. Yeah, this isn't like some sort of
quack technique where it's like like we really wish that,
you know, Mary would go to an actual doctor, but
(11:13):
she's going to that maggot physician. No, it's it's it's
not a first line defense. And another thing is that
when we were researching this podcast, I happen to find
out that there's a substance called hydrogels and they're capable
of performing a lot of the functions that maggots can
do in maggot therapy. So and some of the research
seemed to indicate that hydrogels and maggot therapy had about
(11:35):
equally effective utility. And and you know, so hydrogels are
without the maggots, so people very well might opt for those.
But let's get into the process. Let's let's release the maggots,
shall we. Okay, So, yeah, so we've got this putrid
area that needs a clean up. We've got some some
some dead tissue that needs to be cleared away from
(11:56):
the live tissue. Yeah, so first that you gotta get
the maggots. But don't don't go gathering up the maggots yourself. Yeah,
you want some farm rates, right, don't slather them, you know,
willy nilly all over the wound. Although I did read
one one article that said patients could be taught to
administer this treatment themselves and then when they were done
(12:17):
with the magaziners, just toss them in the garbage and
be done with it. Yeah, they probably would would like that, right, Yeah. Um,
I imagine the danger is that you probably need to
have a strong stomach. And then of course you could
get the ratio wrong, because, like we said, there is
a particular ratio you're looking for, and in fact, the
general rules thumb is that you're gonna want about eight
maggots per square centimeter of flesh that you want them
(12:40):
to consume, otherwise they go a little crazy. Right, Well,
they're gonna get hungry, right, So you don't want to overpopulate.
Don't overpopulate. But let's let's get back to the process.
You gotta have the maggots. Yeah, yeah, So you're gonna
want to have the maggots, and you want to have again,
the right maggots because there are a lot of different
(13:01):
flies in the world and uh, and all of them
have larva, but you're generally the most favored of variety
is the green blow fot fly, which is, uh, do
you want to take a shot at the I was
gonna give it Phoenicia Sarah Cotta. Sounds actually kind of tasty,
sounds like an Italian dessert. Yeah. And these are growing
(13:21):
to get in a lab, in a lab and a
disease free environment, and they're shipped in a sterile containers,
probably overnight. Yeah. Alright, so the maggot show up, they're
ready for business. Well, you've got to have an open
wound of some sort, and preferably that wound is clean,
so open water and wash it out, et cetera. Okay,
so keep part of the process here, because a lot
of us are not at all cool with maggots just
(13:44):
you know, wandering around. Our open source is a sedative.
Often patients who choose to undergo maggot therapy will be
administered a sedative, a heavy one. Yeah. And when you
first mentioned this, I was thinking like, oh, these guys
are kind of WIMPs. They just don't want it, to
want to feel like they're you know, a little larva
calling on them. But then the whole thing is that
they're they're crawling on air and very sensitive areas like inflamed,
(14:06):
you know, gross areas that you know, So it's like
pressure on a wound. So of course you don't want
to feel that, right, They're getting fat off of, you know,
eating your necrotic tissue, and it's putting pressure on the wound.
And in fact, patients have reported that maggot therapy can
be more painful than other kinds of therapy. Interesting, Yeah,
so I mean you really want to not be aware
(14:26):
of it, I would think. So the fact that it's hurting,
you know, and you're you know that there are maggots
in there, that would that would sort of add But again,
if you were using vultures, the sedation would have to
be a lot heavier, right, So so no vultures. Okay,
So you're gonna add these live maggots to the wound,
and like with leeches, um, you're gonna gotta you gotta
steal them off. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta. You don't
(14:48):
want the running all over the place. You gotta direct
them to the task. And so you're gonna steal it
off and then you're going to cover the wound with
a bandage. To keep it in place. And you can
also um as opposed, if you're a posed to having
them kind of crawling freely, you can put them in
a bio bag or this sealed nylon bag. And of
course um necessity is the mother of all inventions. So
(15:10):
there's a company now, Monarch Labs, that's come out with
a special maggot dressing. It has a nice name too. Yeah,
I think I think there was some of that in
the fridge here at work until the name threw it away. Yeah,
the Paul Newman variety too, so I'm sure it was healthy.
But you know O right. So this was not salad dressing,
but rather wound dressing, and it's called love Flap Flap Flap.
(15:34):
It's a nice French name. Brings an element of class
to magot therapy which needs a little bit of that. So,
according to the company, the first pre manufactured cage dressing
available for the US market. That's what it is. The
single piece of flap Maggot confinement dressing is intended to
prevent medicinal maggots from leading the wound before the treatment
of scheduled to enter and of course reduce the time
(15:56):
and cost necessary to confine them to the wound. So
you can look that up over Monarch Labs if you yea,
are you saying a picture of this, right? I did. Yeah.
It kind of looks like a sticker with a part
that peels off, and in the part that peels off,
you'd see the wound. Yeah. It's kind of like if
you're painting a design on something, you need like a stencil, right, yeah, yeah,
it's kind of like a maggot stencil. So yeah, so
(16:18):
in a few days time, you change from place the
bandage in the maggots, uh, and then you flush them
out with probably like a saline solution or something. But wait, wait,
do you miss the most important part? You miss what's
happening in the mouth. Yes, what they're doing, well, they're yeah,
they're eating up that decaying flesh, and they're clearing the
place of bacteria. At least they're capable of clearing the
(16:39):
place of a lot of different species of bacteria again,
because they get these tiny little mouths, you know, going
after the little bits there. And in the whole time
they're using fluids too, right, they're turning to some enzymes
for help with breaking down the dead tissue further and
their stimulating cell growth there. This is pretty cool. They're
also excreting an antibacterial agent. Yeah, I imagine we excrete
(17:00):
an antibacterial agent. Just imagine possibilities. But but yeah, this
is this kind of boils down to what I've read before,
like people talking about how maggots are are really like
they're they're kind of clean. They're pretty clean organisms. You know,
they they're in the pig. Yeah, yeah, they may be
in gross situations, but you know, there's there's nothing wrong.
(17:21):
This is also why the maggot I believe. I read
something a while back talking about if we were ever
to send astronauts to Mars, you know, a long space flight,
but if you could get get them to eat maggots,
astronauts astronauts the eat maggots, and that would be awesome
because maggots, I mean, they're they're they're larva, and they're
all they do is fatten up and get ready for
the next stage of their life. So they have a
lot of like protein in them, and they're like very nutritious.
(17:44):
That's why like chickens, chickens will eat the heck out
of maggots, you know, their whole like their whole like
farming operations that depend on like like making sure that
like the chickens eat the maggots. Or I think there's
some like tapia farming um processes out there where like
the Seriously, it's like I remember hearing about this words
like the telapia, You harvest the telapia made, then you
let flies land on the leftovers, maggots grow and you
(18:08):
get the maggots, and you fee the maggots the telapia,
et cetera. So that's nice, it's very efficient. So yeah,
maggots basically they just need a little bit of a
new campaign, a new new pr campaign to revise their image,
don't you think. Yeah, because like the treatments are really
pretty cheap, right, it's like a hundred bucks. Yeah, it
(18:30):
can be a hundred bucks, and so that's a lot
less than surgery and probably your insurance company would be
more psyched to, you know, to shout a hundred bucks
than the cost involved in surgery. Yeah, put that in
the ad campaign. I can like see like the the
the TV ad with like you know, people walking through
a field and they start having a heart to heart
about the maggots. So the treatment can last as long
(18:53):
as ten days, and it's important to note that patients
may also be taking antibotics while the magot therapy is going.
So let's talk about it. You guys may think we're
a little crazy. You might not have heard this before.
You're thinking, no, I don't buy it, Robert Allison, they're
sort of out there. Yeah, because we've talked. It's kind
of like the whole thing with the hookworm treatment. The
hookworm treatment was is still considered out there, but well
(19:13):
we only mentioned that in passing. Yeah, but it's gotten
a lot of but it's gotten a lot of coverage
elsewhere therapy. You just did a blog post on it. Yeah. Yeah.
So so there are some pretty major supporters or at
least people who don't object to mega therapy, one of
them being the US Food and Drug Administration. Yeah, they
came around to it in two thousand and four, the
same year that they were decided to be okay with
(19:34):
the leeches. It was a whole banner year. The Legion
Maggot Council really made some some some progress that here,
and more recently, November two thousand nine, you had the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the US revising
their billing Code guidelines UH in an effort to help
patients get reimbursed for megat therapy. Health Canada, the Canadian
(19:58):
Public Health Agency has gone so far is to classify
medical maggots as drugs. So, of course downsides of therapy,
there's side effects, there are you know, other things that
you need to consider when you're considering your overall health.
So maga therapy limited research out there. So I was
reading an article in the Journal of the Canadian Medical
(20:19):
Association c m A J I believe, and the articles
mentioned mentioning that there are only two randomized clinical trials
on maga therapy that have ever been published. So that's
kind of kind of a small amount of information out there,
and a lot of these studies, um that I was encountering,
you know, pretty small little studies done here and there.
(20:41):
There's also, of course the you factor of magot therapy. Yeah. Yeah,
like we touched on it's like it's hard to get
past the fact that it does involve letting little tiny
larva's much on your flesh. And you also mentioned like
some people were also like concerned, like, oh, what if
the maggots escape their enclosure and someone sees one on
the or But what if you're going to your doctor's
(21:02):
office and he's going to give you your magatherapy, you know,
some escape You're you're in the waiting room, you're, you know,
scanning your copy of People. All of a sudden, you know,
maggot crawls across your foot. Maybe a maggot crawls across
Katie Holmes's I while you're looking at the cover of People.
I mean, but I think I don't think that would
be good. It would not be good, but it comes
(21:23):
it's i mean, cleanliness goes hand in hand with with
proper medicine. So it's kind of like you also wouldn't
want to go in to get your check up and
be like, oh my god, somebody lants to boil on
this table and it's still yucky there, No, because if
they would clean it up, you know. So this is true. Now, granted,
a maggot unlike boil, plus we can actually conceivably crawl
out of a room or something, but still it's a
(21:45):
you know, you know, but it's still they can do
things to keep it clean. And in fact, doctors do things,
do do things to to keep their offices clean. And
we thank them for that. Okay, So another downside, mag
they die easily. Oh yeah, yeah, theah they're they're not
particularly long lived, so you gotta have a good stock
of them. Yeah, and you can't just again, you can't
(22:06):
just go up on the roof and like throw down
a Hamburger patty and come back in a couple of hours.
You know. It's like you need to get them again
through through actual um medicinal maggot providers. So yeah, yeah.
And lastly, some bacteria, some species of bacteria may thwart
maggots and leave them dead um if you send them
into cleaner infected wound. And one of the species in
(22:27):
question is called Pseudomonas arruginosa. I believe also sounds kind
of taste all. They all sound like something I would
get an Italian restaurant. I'll have the Pseudomonis of organosa please. Yeah,
with the caesar salad. I think that one is more
of a red sauce, and the one we named earlier
was white. And then, of course maggots painful, can be
painful when you're having this treatment. So I feel like
(22:49):
we should end this podcast on the question of whether
you do it. Would you do it, Would you undergo
magat therapy? Yeah, I mean definitely. If it was a
situation where people are like, hey, we may have to
amputate and you know, but we want to try maggots first,
I would be like, by all means, let's try maggots.
You know. I would not necessarily be opposed to the
vultures if that were. Okay, vulture is no place maggot therapy. Legit.
(23:12):
Vultures just is just me talking about it. But no,
it's I would definitely give the maggot option ago if
it were something, you know, if it were recommended to
me by my doctor. Yeah, I think I would too. Yeah.
I would like to ask producer Matt. He's not allowed
to talk, it's not we can't see him either. I
(23:34):
wonder if producer Matt would do it, would you? Yeah, yeah,
that would do it. Yeah, yeah, Matt has answered in
the affirmative. So all three of us would do it
if if we were presented with the right situation, would
you though, so right in and tell us. We'd love
to hear from you. We we'd love to hear what
you think about maggot therapy or just maggots in general.
You know, yeah, those impressions of maggots one of the
(23:56):
things for me, Like we've we talked about leeches in
another podcast we recorded day and we talked about maggots
and neither of these are really like gross me out
because they seemed very task based. There's there are definite
things they're out there achieving, like that that maggot he's
gonna eat until he turns into a fly, and more
power to him that leech, that leach wants to drink blood,
and you know, carry on. But I've always been really
sickened out by garden slugs because I'm like, what the
(24:18):
what is this for? What is it doing? Unless it's
like feeding off of just my utter revulsion at it's
like fat sliminess. I think that's an unfair characterization of
the garden slugs. Yeah, well, I challenge you or anybody
to tell me what good they're doing, all right, So
challenges out. Send us an email Science Stuff at how
stuff first dot com, maggots slugs. We'd love to hear
(24:38):
from you. And uh, we got a little listener Ley'd
like to share with you. Today we have we have
Brian and he ran in to talk to us about
um the podcast. He said, Hey, fourteen and just got
(25:01):
back from a one year trip to Japan. I really
like the podcast and it helped a lot in plane
right back. I bet it did. That's one long uh
one long podcast. That's one long plane ride. Yeah. I
wonder how many episodes of stuff from the Science lo
have you listened to? So, Ryan said, I listened to
your smelling podcast, and the Smell a Vision reminded me
of something I saw in the Japanese Museum. There was
(25:24):
a computer that allows you to play a bunch of videos,
mostly cooking related, and smells would come out of the
computer related to what you're watching. Have you guys heard
of this? I think, yeah, I think I have heard
of this. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I wonder what kind
of smells. Well, you're very limited in what you can watch, like, like,
you know, even there are some great things up there,
I wouldn't necessarily want to watch, say The Seven Samurai,
(25:46):
you know, within Smell a Vision or you know, or
pretty much any film that I like. I can't think
of one that would smell really good. I don't know.
Emily might smell good. Oh, Emily, that would definitely smell good. Yeah,
she's so cute, mean, not just her, but like, you know,
they're in a cafe. It's Paris. I don't know. Yeah, agreed.
There's French perfume, there's flowers buffing through the air. There's
(26:09):
the smell of a nice you know, French roast. Yeah,
that's a good smell. Speaking of perfume, I don't know
about the movie perfume. Like same for the actual perfume.
Probably smell really awesome, but not so much the Paris gutters,
you know. No. Hey, And on a more serious note,
we also heard from Joshua and Joshua is a PhD
candidate UM, and he read in to talk to us
(26:30):
about our recent Evolution and Action podcast, and he wanted
to talk to us about something that I said. Actually,
I was talking a little bit about antibiotics and um,
just my parental fear and Joshua and Allison mentioned that
as a parent, was troubling to give her child antibatics
because she feared that her child might evolve resistance to
(26:50):
the antabatic And actually that was in a statement, So
thank you josh for correcting me. I just wanted to
point out that her child wouldn't evolve resistance to the
antabatic because first, the target of the animotic is, of course,
the bacterial population living inside the child, not the child itself. Second,
and more important, evolution can't happen within a single individual,
the idea that individual can change its attributes over its
(27:11):
lifetime to suit a set up environmental circumstances with champ
blah blah blah. So a lot to say, interesting stuff
to say. Um and I really appreciate that correction because
it's an important distinction to make. I mean, it's not
my my daughter evolving resistance. It's you know, the bacteria
population in her, which you know decided it didn't like
particularly antibiotic, and it's scared the heck out of me
(27:32):
as a parent. But there are options out there, and
it's pritty. It's a it's important distinction to make. I think,
what do you think? Yeah, totally. Yeah, let us know
when we slip up and we'll read the corrections in
the air. Don't just talk about it's an alley or
it worn't and be like that Allison and Robert. You
should hear what they said the other day. You know,
it'll clear the air. Yeah, we're happy to do so.
(27:55):
Um So, yeah, I think that about wraps it up.
Thanks for listening to us, and if you want to
hang out on Facebook, Twitter, we're there too. Yeah. On
Facebook we're stuff in the Science Lab and on Twitter
we are lab stuff alright, rock on. Thanks for listening.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
(28:17):
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Com home page
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