Remember those flesh-eating parasites knocking at our nation's door?
They're here!
Just a quick reminder of exactly what we're talking about:
Screwworms are nasty little buggers. The screwworm fly uses mammalian hosts to facilitate its disgusting lifestyle; females "lay 250 - 500 eggs in the exposed flesh of warm-blooded animals. The larvae hatch and burrow into the surrounding tissue as they feed."
Should the wound be disturbed during this time, the larvae burrow or ‘screw' deeper into the flesh, hence the larva's common name.
Reuters is reporting that a case of human screwworm infection was reported in Maryland.
The CDC had confirmed a case of New World screwworm in a person in Maryland who had traveled to the United States from Guatemala.
And the CDC says the only proven way to treat an infection is a painful physical removal of the worms: one by one.
But HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon said,
The risk to public health in the United States from this introduction is very low.
Not zero mind you, but low.
The danger is growing everyday. There was a screwworm outbreak in cattle in Mexico about 370 miles south of our border, and they're spreading north rapidly.
Our only defense against the little monsters is unleashing hundreds of millions of sterile male screwworm flies. The species only mates once in their lifetime, so if that encounter does not produce new flies, the population dwindles.
The USDA is currently constructing a sterile screwworm fly factory in Edinburg, Texas, to combat the monsters.
(That's about 60 miles from my house, which is terrifying! What if some of those things get loose?).
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