Woman subjects herself to 18,000 bedbug bites in search of a way to conquer them

As we’ve insisted, and were then proven right by a huge amount of evidence last year, the war against bedbugs is hardly over. It might not ever be over. That being said, there are some humans who refuse to go quietly into that good night, and are taking the fight to the bedbugs themselves. Oddly enough, that apparently means letting them bite the shit out of you, which is what biologist/masochist Regine Grieves did, according to Business Insider, in order to try to determine a scent that could lure bedbugs into a trap. After being bit EIGHTEEN THOUSAND times, at least it sounds like Grieves found a possible way to stop them.

Before you ask how Grieves didn’t scratch her skin off, it turns out she’s one of those lucky people who only gets a light rash from bedbug bites. So, Grieves let herself be a bedbug pincushion, lying in a bedbug infested bed in a lab, in order to get them to bite her and then shit out their disgusting blood-filled poop. Those are the black spots you find on your bed if you have bedbugs, by the way.

Grieves and her husband and fellow biologist Gerhard Grieves studied what the bedbug poop and their skin flakes for the scent markers that call bedbugs towards their food (i.e., you). The point being, those scent markers could then be put in a bedbug trap to lure them to their deserved doom. That still wasn’t enough, but the bedbug-hating duo teamed up with chemist Robert Briton to look at the very atoms of the bedbug remains, where they finally discovered a way to lure and stop the bedbugs in one place. Like the Manhattan Project though, this is just a step towards the ultimate weapon though, so for now we’ll have to wait for the trio to make their formula perfect and release it commercially. Then, and only then, will we maybe be able to end this war once and for all.

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