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Agence France-Presse picks up on a New Scientist report that "tiny parasites called pig whipworms appear to have an astonishing effect on symptoms for a crippling form of bowel disease." Inflammatory bowel disease has become much more common over the past 50 years, coinciding with "a sharp fall in infections by classic intestinal parasites such as roundworm and human whipworms."

Researcher Joel Weinstock recruited 200 sufferers from the condition. "By regularly drinking a concoction of thousands of pig whipworm eggs, many of them saw symptoms, such as abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhoea, disappear." Unlike human whipworms, pig whipworms are "a friendly gut-stabilising parasite because the eggs, after developing, do not survive very long in the human body."

A European regulatory agency has approved the elixir for sale. "It will be sold under the name of 'TSO' (for Trichuris Suis Ova), presumably because 'Drinkable Pig Whipworms' may not be a smart branding strategy."

But really, if they want to encourage the drinking of worms, why not market them as "tequila"?

"Retreat, hell! We just got here!"-Captain Lloyd Williams, 2nd Marine Division, Belleau Wood, France, WWI