Medical comeback of maggots, leeches has feds eyeing regulation

[question everything]

Medical comeback of maggots, leeches has feds eyeing regulation

By Gardiner Harris
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

August 25, 2005

WASHINGTON – Flesh-eating maggots and bloodsucking leeches were once the tools of quack doctors and shamans. But they have experienced a quiet renaissance among high-tech surgeons, and for two days beginning today, a federal advisory board will discuss how to regulate them.

Leeches, it turns out, are particularly good at draining excess blood from surgically reattached or transplanted appendages. As microsurgeons tackle feats such as reattaching hands, scalps and even faces, leeches have become indispensable.

Maggots clean festering wounds that fail to heal – as happens among diabetics – better than almost anything in use, though the use of maggots in the United States has been slight, in part because of squeamishness.

But neither leeches nor maggots, despite their long histories of use, have ever been subject to thorough regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. So the medical advisers are being asked to create general guidelines about how they should be safely grown, transported and sold.

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Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050825/news_1n25fda.html

[katsy]

1. Coincidence?

They made a comeback at the white house too!

[geomon666]

2. Thank you

:toast:

[rodeodance]

3. hey--love it!!

[yorkiemommie1]

4. good one !

:-)

[question everything]

5. Except that in nature they benefit humanity n/t

[Benhurst]

6. Should have no trouble getting approved if someone can

figure out how the pharmaceutical industry can muscle in on the profits.

[Wizard777]

7. The FDA can approve and regulate a process to produce

medical grade leeches and maggots. But anything else is a medical practise to be regulated by the state. At least that is the way I see it. The medical industry is ever increasingly trying to assert an ownership over Nature. No one can own any natural substance including Marijuana. It's the property of the people.