All hail insects

Having just started to reread Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" for the first time, it was a pleasure to read an article today on the potentially immense health benefits to be derived from the benign cockroach. Turns out the cockroach, locust, and likely other insects, have within their bodies a compound so toxic to bacteria that it kills ~90% of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and Escherichia coli (E.coli). This is striking because MRSA kills ~20,000/year in the US alone, while E.coli kills 250 more Americans per year. Tens of thousands more are infected per year, of course, and the global impact of these two lethal-to-human organisms is very difficult to calculate.

Kafka's novel metamorphosis from human to amorphous (but very cockroach-like) insect represented his decision to leave the 'normal' world of humanity behind and to become a writer to the exclusion of almost all other activity. To Kafka, both insect and writer are destined to be reviled, isolated, and ultimately killed by mainstream humanity. Fulfilling his prophecy, Kafka died prematurely and in typical hermitic isolation -- from the effects Mycobacteria tuberculosis or one of the few other bacteria types that cause TB.

Tuberculosis we can treat with a rigorous antibiotic regime in our more modern times. But MRSA is a nemesis, and sometimes is resistant to every single antibiotic within our hospital arsenals. Hence MRSA patients are usually isolated and often hooked to last-resort IVs. Another insect is used for treatment when MRSA can begun to kill human skin tissue. Maggots are applied to the wound, as they ingest dead tissue and speed healing time significantly.

Within our lifetimes we may be saving human lives via insect power in many different ways. Maggots to eat dead tissue; cockroach/locust compounds to treat resistant bacterial infection; and whole insects, caught by massive nets and nicely disguised, as a way to help feed the 7+ billion folks on our ever more challenged planet. Saving graces often come from the most surprising places, and I look forward to what other insect remedies present themselves as I make my way through my own metamorphosis.