Perhaps it's not the bubonic plague or malaria — but there's no denying our current bed bug epidemic is a damnable, dark pestilence that hangs over our fair city like a big, bitey cloud. Infecting the sheets of the godly and the hipster alike, these little bloodsuckers have become the new sexually transmitted disease — one for which there is no prophylactic. But a cure — a real, live cure — may be just around the corner, though it comes with an itchy price. Scientists at Eastern Virginia Medical School have discovered that, after injecting patients with Stromectol and allowing bed bugs to bite them, four out of five of the tiny devils die within hours. One might surmise that, if distributed to likely bed bug transmitters, use of the drug would eventually cause the insect's population to plummet. It is, potentially, a massive step forward for science and humanity but one that, as the blog Animal notes, "requires you to ingest pesticide." We say it's totally, 100% worth it. (Animal)
Photo: Courtesy Eastern Virginia Medical School