WEIRD, wild and decidedly offbeat research findings have emerged in 2009.
Among the most bizarre medical discoveries were:.
– Pulling a tick off the wrong way can lead to meat allergy. An Australian doctor found the link while studying rising cases of the allergy among people who live on Sydney’s tick-prone northern beaches. “I now tell everybody I see who lives anywhere near ticks to use `Aerostart’ (spray-on engine cleaner) or another high-alcohol substance,” said Dr Sheryl van Nunen. “Stun the tick before you scrape it out and it can’t inject what it injects.”
– Serial coffee drinkers are more likely to feel “the presence of dead people”, British researchers found. They asked students about their caffeine intake and those with the highest were also most likely to report seeing, or hearing, things that were not there.
– US surgeons successfully restored a woman’s sight by pulling out one of her teeth, placing a lens inside the tooth and then implanting the tooth in her eyeball. The technique can only be used when a person has a scarred cornea on an otherwise healthy eye.
(lots more after jump…)
