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A lot of people are afraid of needles, which unfortunately means they may avoid potentially life-saving injections. For these people, the drug delivery could be made by putting medicine into the poison-sac of a big hairy spider and then allowing the spider to sink its fangs into the patient, thus solving
the problem. Alternatively, dracula could be hired to do the same job.
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And for those who are afraid of dentist's drills, we could use woodpeckers. |
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And for amuptations... a shark. |
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Using insect that deliver a bite witha medicmal venom might be practicle - particularly for use on livestock. the idea might work. |
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I happen to have a problem with needles but I'm not entirely sure I'd prefer a tarantula. Dracula isn't much better. However if you could find an atractive female vampire then I might give it some thought. |
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Robert Kidney - didn't you get a shot at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A.? |
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As an arachnophobe I'd say bring on the big rusty needles! I don't particularly like syringes but prefer them to not getting the life-saving (or pain numbing) drugs and I have never understood the fear of dentist drills. Spiders, on the other hand... ugh! |
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An assortment of wines and spirits at your local chemist, to help wash down horrible-tasting medicines? |
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I recall reading somewhere about the value of lobbing a handful of maggots into some types of wounds. Apparently the little loves gobble up the dead bits but leave the healthy stuff alone. |
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I can't help but feel that some of these annotations have been made in the wrong spirit ... |
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[AndyKnott] raises an interesting point about the use of maggots in healing wounds. Leeches are also making a comeback. Perhaps a more natural method of vaccine/drug delivery is not so outlandish. |
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To get wound cleaning maggots (great for Hanson's
disease) You have to raise them in a clean environment. I
guess we'd have to do the same thing with Lubbit's spider,
or maybe the spider could just wear those little baggie
shoes doctors have. I think that'd be cute! |
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And here was me wondering what you were going to be injecting into tarantulas, and why. |
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People fear needles. People fear spiders. Use a chainsaw. |
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Ok - now that is funny... but I would want to still be in one peice after recieving the "life saving" injection... |
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I want a machine to inject tarantulas (tarantulae?) into rooms. It would have two settings: "lethal" and "zany jest", depending on the variety and angriness of the spiders. The spiders would be propelled by compressed air out of a tube through a small window, just-open door, or purpose-built tarantula vent. I envisage a rate of about 5 a second, with a magazine holding 2-300. Naturally, the machine would hold one magazine of each type to suit your mood. |
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Ideal for so many uses, from James Bond villain, to Rushmore-style practical joke (the hero used a bee delivery system to fill a hotel room with buzzings), to a practival method for getting rid of insect infestations (do tarantulas eat insects? I guess it'd get rid of whatever tarantulas like to get rid of.) |
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Using satire in an annotation to a satirical post is often confusing to the reader for your true opinions on the subject... *i'm confused, are we 'for' or 'against'?* |
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Well, what about a genetically engineered flea or mosquito for diabetics ? It sucks up some of your blood as "fuel" = (payment), analyses your blood glucose, then re-injects a corresponding amount of insulin ? Modify the saliva so it doesn't trigger the immune reaction that caused the itching an irritation. |
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You could even have mosquitos that vaccinate you against malaria (if we had a workable malaria vaccine). |
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'If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.' |
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One magic technology at a time, please. |
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StarChaser: No, not "magic". Soundly based on existing biotechnology technology. |
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1. AstraZeneca have GM sheep which produce human vaccine proteins in their milk. I know one of the team that did this and I have seen the sheep.
It is considerably easier to edit insect DNA than mammalian DNA. And a salivary gland is simliar in many ways to a milk gland. So there's no reason to assert that with the correct R&D an insect could not be made to secrete human proteins in its saliva. |
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The biofeedback mechanism to control the insulin dose is entirely speculative. And I suspect you would need a lot of bites to control your blood glucose. |
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2. Researchers in the UK have successfully inserted the genes for a vaccine protein into bananas. |
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3. Work on a malaria vaccine is proceeding, but very slowly. It is a very difficult problem due to the chameleon-like properties of the malarial parasite, and its nasty habit of lurking inside erythrocytes. This is the most speculative aspect of the idea. |
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And who has taught a mosquito to analyse blood glucose? |
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I don't know about tarantulas, but vampire bats are quite gentle. But then, they're not exactly *injecting* anything, are they? |
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Oh well. Forget I even said anything. (wanders off, hands in pockets, kicking a can) |
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Bees! Less scary. But then, less medicine. |
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we reallly should look at genetically altering the mosquito. They are a menace and we can't seem to get rid of them ( a billion can hatch in an acre of irrigated farmland) If we can somehow get these critters to deliver antibodies of certain diseases, and then figure out how to propogate these to the majority of a population of mosquitos in a certain region, then we could easily take care of the vaccination problems in many areas of the world.
Although I am not scared of spiders,I am rather afraid of getting bit by one especially a tarantula. I have also handle many spiders (including a black widow) and never been bit so a mosquito delivery system would be much more effective. Fleas could also be used for heartworm and parvo. |
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I think people have looked into
producing GM mosquitoes that can't
harbour the malaria parasite. You have
to have something that is as fit as the
natural mosquito so that it can replace
the native population. (Err, I mean the
native mosquito population.) |
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