Is my prescription for maggots and leeches ready?

Even though maggots and leeches have been used for hundreds of years for medical purposes, the Food and Drug Administration finally classified them as biotherapy medical devices which would require a prescription.

Doctors now have FDA approval to use maggots which are the larvae of green blow flies, to trim dead flesh with more precision than scalpels. Disinfected maggots which are white as snow and wiggling are applied to wounds as a last resort in some cases. Apparently there is little or no discomfort while the maggots eat decayed flesh and a treatment normally takes from 1 to 2 days.

Since the maggots only eat decayed flesh and do not touch the live tissue, to cure rate is high with relatively no pain, no need to go to operating room, and no bleeding, typically.

In addition to ulcers, maggots have been used to treat to skin ulcers, bedsores and to aid burn victims. Some of the burn victims from the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon benefited from this biotherapy.

According to Gilbert Waldbauer, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, prior to the FDA endorsement of disinfected maggots as medical devices, doctors would get their maggots from local insect specialists for their supplies.

Dr. Ron Sherman's maggot therapy laboratory at the University of California Irvine, ships maggots grown under sterile conditions to US and Canadian doctors and he sent enough medical-grade maggots for about 2,000 treatments.

Leeches which are usually imported from France have been used by doctors for centuries to control bleeding especially after reattachments of severed fingers and toes.

A panel suggested that the FDA needs to include instructions on how to humanely kill leeches before disposal because medicinal leeches become engorged with potentially tainted human blood, they must be disposed of as biohazardous waste.

It will be interested to see the response from PETA.