You don’t want maggots eating your brains, but you do want robotic, remotely controlled maggots eating your brain tumors. From Nic Halverson at Discovery:

“Maggots are typically a telltale sign of death and decay, but the legless larva have inspired a new robotic prototype that could one day help brain surgeons preserve the lives of their patients.

For the last four years, J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and his team have been developing an intracranial robot that will help remove brain tumors. Shaped like a mechanical finger, multiple joints give the brain bot a range of probing motions. An electrocautery tool at its tip heats and destroys tumors, while a suction tube sucks out debris. The robot can also be remotely controlled by a surgeon while a patient is inside an MRI scanner, giving the surgeon an excellent view of hard-to-see tumors.

Simard was inspired to develop such a robot after watching a TV show where plastic surgeons were using sterile maggots to remove damaged or dead tissue from a patient.”

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“The Caterpillar,” via Rod Serling in 1972