The sunscreen that blocks Box Jellyfish
Continuing on my annoying pests trend, in tropical Queensland, in Australia, you’ve got a dilemma - the water is kind of chilly to swim in in winter. But in summer, the Box Jellyfish makes swimming in the ocean a somewhat worrying prospect. These jellyfish inject a powerful venom which can kill a human, particularly a child, very quickly.
The best protection is of course not to go swimming. Barring that, wearing a full lycra body suit will protect you (as well as being supremely fashionable, particularly amongst X-Men!) and swimming within nets that are often setup to keep the jellyfish out are other strategies. But I’ve got to say, a new treatment being developed in Queensland sounds like a pretty amazing solution if it pans out. Apparently, researchers have developed a cream that stops the jellyfish from stinging you. When coated with the cream, the jellyfish doesn’t recognise that you’re prey or predator, and so simply ignores you. Apparently. What’s most disturbing, however, is that they’re actually doing human trials, initially using just a coated finger, and then going “as far as we could” before being stung - so far, no-one has been stung once. (Again, apparently!) Makes you wonder how far you’d go in the name of science…
It may be some time before the cream is commercially available, and I’d be surprised if it becomes a sole protective measure (even with my faith in science, I’d be concerned about it washing off etc), but certainly it looks like a good start! I wonder if there’s any other applications this idea could be put towards? Australia’s certainly got enough deadly creatures to think about!
It is not unsual for biologists to do rather extreme experiments on themselves, or other human volunteers, that involve dosing themselves with poisons parasites or bacteria. For example, Ron Taylor (famous Australian marine biologists), decided to carry out a comparative analysis of the efficacy of vinegar versus methylated spirits for the treatment of jellyfish stings. In a rather pragmatic and somewhat coarse experiments he put out his arms, dropped tentacles on both of his arms, let them sit there for a while until he could feeel the sting, and then treated one arm with vinegar and the other with metho. I cannot clearly remember the results, I think it was that vinegar was more effective.
Whether I would do this type of experiment on myself, I am not sure. In comparison to some of the experiments that have been carried out in the name of progress, these experiments, that involve only the fingers of volunteers (I have assumed that the details of the experiment were fully disclosed prior to their participation), are relatively speaking, mild. Take, for example, some of the experiments that have been carried out in the name of nuclear physics, Bikini Atol ., Woomera….
or the number of people that have died from experiments with various technologies, such as X-rays…..
and the number of chemists that have died from a mysterious range of unexplained illnesses….
Good point, particularly about X-rays and so forth. I’m just not certain how far my committment to science extends!