Leeches? Leeches? There's a company that EXPORTS leeches?

YA WANNA GIVE ME NIGHTMARES?

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/n ... 695290002/

Sniffer dog at Toronto airport finds 5,000 leeches in man's luggage

Jayme Deerwester

Updated 3:52 p.m. ET Jan. 27, 2019

A Polish leech exporting company says demand for the creatures is growing, for both medical and other purposes. Edward Baran reports. Video provided by Reuters Newslook

Step aside, passenger with the live snake in your pants: You've officially been usurped as the ickiest airport story we've heard this month.

That dubious honor now goes to a Canadian man found carrying 5,000 live leeches in his luggage as he returned from a trip to Russia.

A beagle working as a sniffer dog for the Canada Border Services Agency made the discovery at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Oct. 17, 2018, National Geographic reported exclusively over the weekend.

Because the man, who has not been named publicly, wasn't actively trying to conceal the parasitic critters, he's not being charged with smuggling. Rather, he's charged with illegally importing an internationally regulated species without obtaining the proper permits, according to Andre Lupert, manager of intelligence for the Wildlife Enforcement Directorate at Environment and Climate Change Canada for the Ontario Region.

Imagine finding 5,000 leeches in someone luggage. (Photo: TIM REVELL/AP)

Lupert told National Geographic that the "illegal leech importer" will face a court hearing next month in Toronto.

Leeches have been used by healers and doctors for over 2,000 years to treat ailments that were believed to be caused by an excess of blood.

Over the last two decades, hirudotherapy, or leech therapy, has come back into favor within the medical community. In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of leeches for certain surgical applications, including trauma and reconstructive procedures.

A big medical use of leeches is to place them on severed body parts that have been re attached to the body. The anti coagulents that leeches inject into the tissues to keep the blood from clotting as they suck the blood helps keep blood flowing into the tissues of re attached organs, like fingers and toes that were severed in accidents. The blood that several or many leeches can suck into their bodies while feeding also helps to keep more blood flowing through tissues that might otherwise bruise or clot so much that it would decrease or stop new blood from flowing through those tissues.

How would you like the job of going around a hospital attaching hungry new leeches to at risk tissue and body parts ? And then making the rounds again to remove the leeches after they have sucked so much that they are then filled with blood from the same patients later on ? And then to place hungry new leeches in the same places to replace all of the full leeches you remove. And keeping them all alive between feedings ?

I ve always wondered if John Wayne Bobbit had leeches to keep his blood circulation going after his severed penis was re attached to him after his wife cut his penis off ? Faced with losing my penis or letting leeches feed on it for weeks, I would say hell yeah, bring on the leeches and save my dick !

I know it sounds just so grotesque and just plain WRONG to intentionally accept a parasite on any living body, but they are finding that leeches really can help in some cases, and just as grotesque and revolting is the use of maggots to keep wounds from becoming septic. To me, it just seems so wrong, but whatever it "seems" the therapy does actually work, especially in "deep pocket" infected tissue, maggots can remove any decaying tissue with minimal trauma and actually help the healthy tissue to heal. All that said, I count myself as very lucky that I have never had need of any such treatments.

This discussion has caused me to think about something really interesting though.... Imagine, use your imagination.... IF there were some sort of parasite like a leech or a maggot that would remove your testicles, and leave you castrated without all the cost and trauma of surgery, would you be willing to accept that parasite? Depending on the side effects? You know, there IS sort of a parasite like that, in infects crabs, it is called the "saculina" and oddly enough, the saculina parasite is itself a microscopic crustacean, and it infects crustaceans... The "saculina" in larva form, bores itself through the exoskeleton of a crab, usually through the leathery parts in the joints of the crab, once inside the saculina moves to the ovaries or testicles of it's host and eats the reproductive organs, and then waits.... while it is waiting, it produces the female estrogen hormones, so even if the infected host crab was male, it becomes female in outward appearance. Eventually, the infected crab gets another saculina and that second infecting parasite goes to the first saculina and impregnates it and then, the host (feminized) crab gestates the saculina's brood inside itself, eventually giving birth to a brood of saculina parasite larvae, that continue the process. So, use your imagination, and imagine IF... maybe in some evil mastermind's genetics laboratory, a genetically modified parasite is made, something that would infect human males, castrate and feminize them and then use their feminized bodies to brood more of itself.... Sounds like a great story for the EA story archive, I wish I was a gifted writer, I would write that story if I had the talent. Anyone else want to try?

yeah, I know the logic of it all but I'd still be screaming in panic and revulsion