I am an entomologist. Yes, the maggots used in therapy like only dead flesh. There is a species of fly that would eat the live tissue too, but you can't control or direct them to stay in one place. My college professor said that soldiers were warned about the color of the fly they allowed to lay eggs in a gangrenous wound, one would save their life, the other, eat the living flesh as well. I don't remember the colors. I'll have to look it up.
There is a human bot fly that burrows in and stays in one place but I think it only feeds on blood. It also secrets allantoin which is healing. Maybe that would work. If you could get a larvae and make a hole in the cancer site the larvae would crawl in. Normally the female bot fly lays her egg on a mosquito or blackfly and the egg hatches at the body temp of a host, drops off and enters the hole the biting insect made. I had a friend who got one in costa rica, in his arm, and reared it out for his collection. It was a very unpleasant experience and not pain free.
Yea I get into this stuff and nearly faint after the first pass in my mohs surgery. |
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Posted - 08/19/2009 : 10:01:33
