A REVOLTING TRUE FACT ABOUT ANTS

VBS Blog

July 07, 2009
by ALEX DUNBAR

I can’t stand it when people get on a high-horse about how Western medicine sucks and everybody should just get acupuncture and drink herbs. I see the value in traditional medicine but people get so dogmatic about it and they start sounding ridiculous. One day when a horrendous cancer starts carving chunks out of my body expect to find me on chemotherapy in a state of the art hospital, not drinking Asian elixirs in the back room of a knickknack shop. See, Western medicine may be too quick to endorse experimental treatments before they even understand their mechanism of action, but traditional medicine unapologetically flirts with total insanity.

Take ant suturing. Two words you never thought you’d see in such close proximity, right? In Africa and South America large ants or beetles are put along the closed “lips of a wound” so that their mandibles clamp down at the edge. When ants along the edge have sufficiently stapled the gash closed, the surgeon twists the bodies from the clamped heads and lets that sucker heal. Once they’ve clamped, there’s little you can do to unclamp these demons.

Wenz: This sounds stupid. There's nothing more to say.

8 months ago
hiphopapotamous: this just feeds into my irrational ant fear

8 months ago
wholenineyards: are you sure all these ants are on the leaf? it sure looks like a cheap iranian photoshop job to me.

8 months ago
Jimbotronic: Who cares. I am a firm believer in that the cures for everything are found in nature. In the case of an emergency you bet im going to modern science, but I sure as hell won't knock an ant suture or a brace made of bamboo. Im all for it lets not play God all the time.

8 months ago
slurrp: what do they mean they never let go? for the rest of your life your gonna have little ants clinging to your skin...?

8 months ago
catbird: This sounds so painful!

8 months ago
xyz123: the best treatment for wounds is to let dogs lick it...they go straight for it and plus something in their saliva is good for it or something

8 months ago
- heinderman: esp if the wound happens to be your ass hole with peanut butter on it.
  
  8 months ago
heinderman: this gives "giving head" all new meaning

8 months ago
ruckus: but i guess to do this you have to be able to pick up several ants without having them bite you since they latch on for life. good thing when you see one ant you know there are more around somewhere.

8 months ago
QueenBee: Animals have been used in medical treatments for ages. Leeches are still used today for several procedures and some of them are quite expensive.

8 months ago
- kokakola: why the fuck would people uses leeches now?? havent they heard of syringes? much better way to take out blood
  
  8 months ago
Sambo: When i saw it in ghana, ant suturing seemed to work just like stitches. but thread isn't like a rare commodity so...

8 months ago
waitwait: some of the stories that have come out about people doing all kinds of things on prescription pills, ambien in particular, scare the shit out of me.

8 months ago
unknownmeasures: these ants are like yellowjackets. they bite/sting once but then they die. i have always wondered if they know they are going down in a blaze of painful glory when they go in for the kill, er booboo.

8 months ago
starks03: I'd love to know who the first person to try this was

8 months ago
- unknownmeasures: i don't know but if god has crash test dummies i'm going to be laughing my butt off in heaven.
  
  8 months ago
colgate1987: if i wasnt heavily sedated, this would seriously freak me out. i dont wana anything creepy and crawly on me, let alone in my open wounds

8 months ago
staypuft: i think it would be cool to have a line of ant sutures. think of it as you being a giant and having a swarm of tiny pit bulls holding your skin together. see? there is a bright side to everything.

8 months ago