Idealogian

Retro Science

Seems that more and more, science is taking its cues from what people were doing thousands of years ago:

Wound-care clinics around the United States are giving maggots a try on some of their sickest patients after high-tech treatments fail.

It's a therapy quietly championed since the early 1990s by a California physician who's earned the nickname Dr. Maggot. But Dr. Ronald Sherman's maggots are getting more attention since, in January, they became the first live animals to win Food and Drug Administration approval -- as a medical device to clean out wounds.

A medical device? They remove the dead tissue that impedes healing "mechanically," FDA determined. It's called chewing.

But maggots do more than that, says Sherman, who raises the tiny, wormlike fly larvae in a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. His research shows that in the mere two to three days they live in a wound, maggots also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue.

. . .

This has been quite a year for wormlike critters. In June, FDA also gave its seal of approval to leeches, those bloodsuckers that help plastic surgeons save severed body parts by removing pooled blood and restoring circulation.

And this:

When Yoav Rosen was growing up in Jerusalem in the 1970's, he was obsessed with an act that was said to have been performed only by the likes of Jesus, Buddha and Hindu mystics - walking on water.

Last month, Mr. Rosen received a United States patent (No. 6,764,363) for a device that he says will allow ordinary people to do just that.

. . .

Mr. Rosen's device also resembles the 1858 design. His pontoons are made of Styrofoam and plywood, and are tethered together so the user's legs will not spread apart while walking.