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Happy New Year: We Might Get A Bedbug-Busting Pill One Day
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jan 1, 2013
Modified Jan 1, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jan 1, 2013
Modified Jan 1, 2013
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If you begged Santa to bring you a way to brutally murder every single vicious little bedbug in your apartment for Christmas, you might be in luck: a recent medical study found humans might be able to kill bedbugs by taking deworming pills.
Dr. Johnathan Sheele, an emergency medical specialist at Eastern Virginia Medical School, discovered that if you take a deworming pill (usually used to treat worm parasites in dogs and humans) and sleep in a bedbug-infested space, the bedbugs that bite you will take in some of the pill's poison and die a few days later. Sheele tested the pill out on four human volunteers, and found taking just one was successful in slaying over 60 percent of those nightmare-inducing bloodsuckers.
If that sounds too good to be true, be aware the Food and Drug Administration hasn't OK'ed deworming pills for bedbug busting—so don't start popping tapeworm pills anytime soon. But doctors say taking deworming pills to kill bedbugs isn't "entirely crazy," and, if coupled with other outside extermination methods might one day be a good way to curb infestations. Doesn't 2013 already sound promising?
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bedbugs
deworming pills
johnathan steele
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Rebecca Fishbein
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