Honolulu Lite
Doctors like duct tape,
warts and allIt is not surprising that researchers have discovered that common duct tape is effective in removing warts. Everyone knows that the ubiquitous gray sticky tape -- apparently a gift to the world by visiting aliens -- is good for everything from re-attaching a damaged car bumper to immobilizing captured burglars until the police arrive. What is surprising is it took this long for researchers to begin testing duct tape for medical purposes.
I assumed duct tape had already become an indispensable treatment tool in the best hospitals across the country. Aside from its obvious uses to tape shut bullet holes and stem the flow of gushing arteries, I can't believe doctors can do procedures like hip-replacement surgery without duct tape. I am equally convinced that duct tape can cure cancer. It's just a matter of figuring out whether to apply it internally or externally.
The duct tape/warts breakthrough was reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine -- a "must have" journal for any household that includes teenagers. The magazine is the perfect size and weight for rolling up and smacking the back of the head of a moping teen who refuses to do the dishes.
USING DUCT TAPE to remove a wart isn't as easy as it sounds. You'd think you just pat down a strip of duct tape over the wart and then give it a vicious rip, pulling the wart out by the roots. Well, that is one way to do it, and a pretty dramatic way if you are doing it to a sleeping friend. But the "official" way to remove a wart using duct tape is to tape the wart for six days, then remove it -- slowly -- and file down the wart (with an emery board, not a wood planer). Then replace the duct tape and continue the procedure for two months until the wart is gone.
That sounds like a long, drawn-out process, especially considering duct tape is generally used to fix things quickly, not necessarily correctly. If you are going to spend two months fixing a broken pipe, you might as well weld the thing instead of taping it.
Which brings up the question of what other workshop paraphernalia medical researchers tried before hitting on duct tape for wart removal. An arc welding tool would seem to have potential. I doubt a wart could live after being covered with a molten drop of solder.
WD-40, another miracle of modern garage science, might work on warts. A few squirts of the aerosol solvent would surely kill whatever wimpy virus causes warts.
Certain auger or routing bits on a cordless drill could prove effective for wart removal. There are many possibilities. I suggest the American Medical Association put Norm Abram -- the do-it-all carpenter from the TV show "This Old House" -- on staff to fully explore the medical uses of shop equipment. Norm could say, for instance, if a compressed air nail gun is effective for closing up after cranial surgery.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com