Plastic Surgery Research

What a world we have in modern medicine! Machines that perform heart surgery on a patient in outer space while the surgeon-operator remains on earth. Diagnostic machines that can show you crystal clear pictures of your brain’s insides. Not to mention plastic surgeons who can turn back the clock on just about any aging face or body.

How about this? A bit more low-tech to be sure but perhaps useful. Learned researchers working in certified ivory towers at a major university reveal that warts can be removed with duct tape. (My advice: just watch out for the quacking that goes along with using the tape!)

Warts Lost to Duck Tape

University of Minnesota researchers studied the old folk cure technique of covering warts with sticky, fibrous duct tape. Results? It only works a scant 21 percent of the time.

But researchers back in 2002 found the technique worked on the warts of young adults and children 85 percent of the time. That study was reported in a 2003 issue of American Family Physician.

The, ah, sticking point? The 2002 used gray duct tape which contains rubber. But the 2007 study used clear duct tape without rubber. It was a true eureka! moment in science. I can hear the television commercial for wart healing now: “Gray heals! Clear Flops!”

Said one of the researchers: “Theoretically, the rubber adhesive could somehow stimulate the immune system or irritate the skin to attack the wart in a different manner.”

One of the other researchers (we are not making this up) also told of a folk cure which worked for him when he was a mere lad: he found a slug and let it slither across his warts from right to left three times.

Want a preview of that commercial? “Get fast, fast relief from warts! Use Ajax Slugs! More Slime! More right-to-left crossings!”