you squirm—but it’s for your own good.
EWWW!
A few hundred years ago, leeches seemed like the answer to everything that ailed a person. Whether it be fever, flu, headaches, hemorrhoids, or something else—a little bloodletting would clear the problem right up. The first documented use of leeches was by Hippocrates in the 5th century B.C., but the worms’ medicinal use is believed to predate even that.
Although maggots have not been used medicinally as long, they have been used for hundreds of years to clean out wounds and prevent infection. They were especially in vogue in the 19th century, before the development of antibiotics. In the 1920s, maggots were often used by U.S. doctors to treat tuberculosis and bone marrow bacterial infections. By the 1940s, the medical community had abandoned them in favor or surgical and medicinal treatments.
Now, both leeches and maggots have staged comebacks and are rising stars in the medical community. In July 2005, the FDA classified them as medical devices, which—like a stethoscope or a defibrillator—means that maggots and leeches can now be used for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes, and doctors across the country are now ordering maggots to the tune of up to 5,000 per week.
FLY BY NIGHT
Maggots are involved in a process called debridement, the removal of dead or diseased tissue to allow healthy tissue to grow or for semihealthy tissue to repair itself. Maggots work so well because they eat only dead tissue—they have no interest in healthy living tissue. Plus, they excrete a substance that includes an antibiotic that helps clean wounds and keeps out bacteria.
A maggot’s performance in treating a wound is actually better than a human surgeon’s because the insect stops as soon as it comes across healthy tissue. A surgeon doesn’t have the ability to be that precise; when a surgeon cuts away dead tissue, he always takes away good tissue, too.
Maggot debridement lasts two or three days on most wounds. The tiny 1 mm-long maggots are put in the affected area, a gauze pad is placed over it to keep them from wandering off, and they get busy doing what they do best—eating. Patients come back at the end of the treatment and the gauze is removed. So people worried about maggots turning into long-term visitors can relax. The maggots are easy to get rid of—after gorging themselves, they become 10 times bigger in size and are eager to leave the wound. The maggots won’t stay where they can’t eat (or breathe—they need oxygen).
THAT TICKLES!
Medicinal maggots are the larvae of green blowflies, and because they’re grown in a laboratory, they’re sterile when applied. Patients typically don’t feel them wiggling their way around. Instead, patients usually describe the sensation as “tickling.” Some patients have reported they do feel it when the maggots eat tissue that’s a little too close to healthy tissue or when they move around an exposed nerve.
It’s a small price to pay for most patients treated with maggots, who otherwise run the risk of losing valuable limbs or appendages. If an injury or skin lesion gets really bad, amputation may be required, so maggot treatment is usually the last resort to prevent the loss of an appendage. Even though most patients are squeamish at first, they get over it when they consider the alternative.
LEECH PATROL
Leeches were first used for medicinal purposes in Egypt some 2,500 years ago. They’ve come a long way since then. Today, they serve humans best by getting rid of excess blood left over after surgical reattachments, skin grafts, and plastic or reconstructive surgery. One long-problematic portion of these surgeries was the complication of reconnecting veins, the vessels that carry blood to the heart. Arteries have thicker walls and cause surgeons fewer problems, but veins often tear and resist suturing. Tears in the vein lead to pools of blood inside the body that form clots and can kill off tissue.
Leeches are designed perfectly for the cleanup job. Their saliva has almost three dozen proteins that, in combination, numb the body to pain, keep swelling down, and provide a remarkably long-lasting anticoagulant so that the blood keeps flowing. A leech may have had his fill after just an hour, but the blood will continue flowing for several hours longer. After the leeches drop off, they are usually too fat to move and are, as far as the medical community is concerned, infectious waste. They’re thrown into an alcohol solution to kill them and then disposed of, just like used needles.
MEDICAL LEECH DISTRIBUTOR?
Leeches are medical marvels. Scientists are trying to understand how their anticoagulation works so it can applied to other health problems like heart attacks and strokes, where blood clots cause life-threatening injury to people. And leeches have been used for treating inflammations, arthritis, glaucoma, infertility, tendinitis, embolisms, and a variety of rheumatoid and venal disorders.
The largest distributor of medical leeches in the United States is a New York-based company called Leeches USA, the distributor for a French company that gained FDA approval to sell leeches in the United States in 2004. The company sells the bloodsuckers for about $10 apiece (with volume discounts), selling about 30,000 critters a year to doctors around the country.
BLOOD TIES
Although there’s been a resurgence in the use of maggots and leeches, patients and the medical community have been slow to embrace them. Though their benefits and uses are well documented, squeamishness and a general “ick” factor make many turn away.
Currently, about 200 hospitals across the United States and Europe prescribe maggots and leeches, but more are coming around. It may not be pretty, but when the alternative is loss of a limb (or death), no one seems to mind. Turns out maggots and leeches aren’t just for the Dark Ages anymore.
LEECH LORE…
• Leeches are probably smarter than a fifth grader; they have 32 brains.
• There are 650 species of leeches, and they’re found almost anywhere there is water.
• They range in size from 1.2 inches to 10 inches long, with the longest known leech recorded at 18 inches.
• They need to feed every 50 to 70 days.
• Leeches are related to earthworms.
• Their average lifespan is 10 years.
…AND MAGGOT MISCELLANEA
• Forensic entomologists at murder scenes use maggots to pinpoint the time of death.
• Francesco Redi, an Italian poet and physician, demonstrated that maggots do not spontaneously generate but come from eggs laid by flies in putrefying meat.
• Napoleon’s surgeon noted that soldiers whose wounds got infested with maggots were less likely to die or need amputation than soldiers whose wounds were “clean.”
• Fishermen sometimes grow their own maggots for bait, and some claim that maggots breed better in dead fish than in meat.
THE “IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN” AWARD
Carbon Offsetting
No good deed goes unpunished, and the people who
practice carbon offsetting are a case in point.
FOOTPRINTS ON THE PLANET
Dire warnings from scientists, the success of the cautionary film An Inconvenient Truth, and endless speculative coverage in the media have motivated many people to seek ways to minimize their carbon “footprint”—their impact on the natural world. That impact comes in all sizes: According to the footprint calculator on the Web site Green Progress for a Green Future, every 100 miles of air travel nets a carbon footprint of 44 pounds because of the carbon dioxide (CO2) pumped into the atmosphere. And driving a regular car 12,000 miles each year leaves behind about 3.5 tons. So to combat that problem, many people and businesses are turning to carbon offsetting.
The companies selling carbon offsets do things to counteract the purchaser’s footprint . . . planting trees or investing in renewable energy, for example. They might also pay developing countries to not produce CO2. Anyone can buy the offsets—from countries to businesses to individuals—and the prices are typically set per metric ton of CO2.
THE GOOD AND . . . THE BAD?
Carbon offsetting gained prominence after the Kyoto Protocol was ra
tified on February 16, 2005. Kyoto was an international agreement (backed by more than 140 countries, though not by the United States) that was committed to reducing greenhouse gases and other environmental problems worldwide. One part of the agreement allowed governments and companies to earn carbon offsets as credits that they could sell to each other. When Kyoto began, a ton of CO2 was worth about 8 euros. Within a year, the price had tripled, but countries kept buying them. Japan and the Netherlands, in particular, bought from markets in Asia and Latin America. London bought more carbon offsets than any other city.
Sounds great, right? But lots of people aren’t fans of the process. In particular, the European Union (EU), the largest buyer of carbon offsetting, has suggested that developing nations haven’t done enough to offset their carbon footprints. In 2008, the EU announced that it wanted developing nations to cut their CO2 production. But the developing nations don’t think they should shoulder the burden. From their point of view, the developed countries have benefited and profited from environmentally unfriendly practices for years before penalties were in place. Developing nations argue that they shouldn’t be forced to comply with the new regulations while they’re still up and coming.
HEY! NO WAY!
The resistance doesn’t stop there. Environmental groups haven’t been quick to embrace carbon offsetting, either. In 2007, a U.K.-based environmental group called Friends of the Earth issued a press release that said, “a number of other organizations [are] becoming increasingly concerned that carbon offsetting is being used as a smoke-screen to ward off legislation and delay the urgent action needed to cut emissions and develop alternative low-carbon solutions.” Environmentalists fear that, by allowing countries, businesses, and individuals to offset their carbon footprint by paying someone else to plant trees or invest in renewable energy, the practice encourages people not to take responsibility for their effect on the environment.
Other environmentalists maintain that carbon offsetting doesn’t do enough to stop global warming anyway. Even if all the carbon emitted by First World nations were offset by Third World nations, they say, it wouldn’t be enough to solve the problem.
Some government agencies are also against it—they worry that the business of carbon trading could easily turn corrupt. In January 2008, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. asked the Federal Trade Commission to start regulating the carbon trading business. Attorneys general from nine different states joined him.
One major problem they found was that people were paying for carbon they hadn’t even emitted yet. The idea behind carbon trading involves stopping future carbon emission, but there are no clear guidelines about how it should be carried out. Thus, carbon trading could become a shady business with no clear-cut rules. “Currently, the market for these offsets is volatile, largely unregulated, and has serious potential for fraud,” Brown said.
WHAT TO DO?
Instead of carbon offsetting, environmentalists recommend changing the way people act so that we all create less CO2. Most people agree that would be ideal. But in the meantime, carbon trading continues to grow as an industry—a 2007 New York Times article noted that carbon trading is now a $30 billion business worldwide and could grow to a $1 trillion industry by 2017.
People want an easy-to-follow solution so they can feel better in the knowledge they’re helping to take care of the problem. But carbon offsetting may need to go back to the drawing board before it becomes the answer that environmentalists are calling for.
JUST IN TIME
How do you view time? The way you see it affects how you talk about it. For example, if your boss says he wants to move his meeting with you back, does that mean he wants to schedule it earlier or later in time? Some people think moving something “back” in time means to make it earlier, and some people—these are the ones who have the dictionary on their side—know it means to make the meeting later. Technically, moving something back means pushing it farther away from where you are (which is the present).
THE JOHNNY WEISMULLER AWARD
San Alfonso del Mar Lagoon, Chile
He may not have won an Oscar for his starring role as
Tarzan, but champion swimmer Johnny Weismuller
would award a Golden Plunger to the world’s
largest swimming pool—and so would we.
BLUE LAGOON
At the San Alfonso del Mar resort in Chile there’s a manmade body of water that could fit 6,000 standard-sized eight-meter backyard swimming pools inside it. Called the San Alfonso del Mar Saltwater Lagoon, the pool overlooks the Pacific Ocean and has racked up some impressive stats, according to the Guinness Book of Records:
• It’s more than 3,323 feet (1,013 meters) or a half-mile long. (The Orthlieb pool in Casablanca, Morocco, previously the world’s largest, looks downright puny at 164 yards long and 109 yards wide.)
• The pool had more than 20 acres of surface area.
• It’s filled with 66 million gallons (249 million liters) of water.
• It’s 10 feet (3 meters) deep at most points, and 115 feet (35 meter) deep at its deepest.
San Alfonso del Mar isn’t just for swimming, either—you can snorkel, scuba dive, kayak, and sail in it. A water shuttle is available to ferry guests from the hotel to ocean side. Naysayers may question building a huge pool next to an ocean, but Chile’s waters often have a fierce undertow, making them inhospitable to swimming.
The lagoon’s crystal-clear, bright-blue saltwater is supplied by the nearby ocean and is kept at a constant temperature of 79° F. It cost $1.5 billion and took 10 years to complete. Fernando Fischmann, founder of Crystal Lagoon, the company that built the pool, developed a specially patented pool-cleaning process called “pulse oxidation,” which he claims uses 100 times fewer chemicals than normal swimming pools. But since this pool is 6,000 times larger than a normal pool, maintenance costs are still considerable—estimated at more than $4 million. It takes 211,400 gallons (800,000 liters) every day to replenish the San Alfonso del Mar Saltwater Lagoon, and two days to empty it of water.
IN THE SWIM
With its balmy water temperature and sunny location, the lagoon is open most months of the year, but if the weather turns windy or rainy, visitors need not sacrifice their tropical vacation—they can simply retreat to a temperature-controlled beach inside a glass pyramid adjacent to the lagoon. That oasis not only has warm water and jet massages, but waterfalls, bubble beds, and heated sand, too.
Even the sand surrounding the indoor and outdoor pools gets special treatment; it’s washed and filtered to be softer than beach sand. The Daily Telegraph reports that the Crystal Lagoon group has plans to open at least six more mega-pools in places like Panama, Argentina, and Dubai.
CRYSTAL-CLEAR HISTORY
Some other interesting aquatic tidbits from our “pool of knowledge”:
• The first known swimming pool in human history was the “great bath” at Mohenjo-Daro, which dates from the third millennium BCE and is located in modern-day Pakistan.
• Ancient Romans built the first swimming pools (different from baths); they also created the first heated pools.
• The first municipal outdoor swimming pool in the United States opened on June 24, 1883, in Philadelphia.
• The modern swimming pool made possible several modern sporting events, including women’s synchronized swimming, first organized in Canada in the 1920s.
• San Francisco’s Fleischhacker Pool, which closed in 1971, was 1,000 feet long and 150 feet wide; lifeguards patrolled it in rowboats.
• Nemo 33, a recreational diving center near Brussels, Belgium, is the one of the deepest pool in the world with a large circular pit that descends to 108 feet.
• In Iceland, geothermal springs beneath the island’s volcanic rock surface allow naturally heated outdoor swimming pools to remain open year round.
• According to Travel & Leisure magazine, the best view from a hotel swimming pool can be found at the Hotel du Cap E
den-Roc near Cannes, France, with a stunning panorama of the Mediterranean.
• North America’s largest indoor water park and the world’s largest indoor wave pool is located at the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, a five-acre water park.
• Miyazaki, Japan, boasts the world’s largest indoor water park—the Ocean Dome, which can hold 10,000 people and includes 450 miles of sandy beach, a fake volcano that flames on the hour, and even mechanical parrots.
• Some Las Vegas hotel pools have gambling tables in them for sun seekers who don’t want to miss out on the gaming action.
• Humans produce approximately 25,000 quarts of spit per person in their lifetime—that could fill two swimming pools.
AN AWARD ORIGIN: THE PEABODY
Peabody was a businessman who switched to public service in 1906 at age 54, working for various universities and the Democratic National Committee. After Peabody died in 1941, the University of Georgia, where he’d served on the board, established the George Foster Peabody Award. Officially presented by the college’s journalism school, the awards honor excellent radio and TV reporting and socially redeeming programming. Winners in 2006 included The Office and Scrubs.
THE “MAKE MY DECADE” AWARD
Movies of the 1970s
Do you feel lucky? You did if you were a moviegoer
in the ’70s, the golden age of cinema.
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD
The end of Hollywood’s studio system should have spelled disaster for movies in the 1970s. If nothing else, it could have heralded the advent of a long learning period in which actors, directors, producers, and writers all searched for different ways to work together in a new paradigm. But that didn’t happen. Instead, creativity exploded. Young directors began exploring bold new visions. Established actors took chances on unlikely projects. And the result was a decade of more unique and groundbreaking movies being made in a shorter period of time than any other in movie history.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards Page 29