The new way to kill bedbugs: take a pill and go to bed and let them bite you. A few days later, they die.
The technique is known as xenointoxication, which sounds like intergalactic beer pong but in medical pathology is Greek for “poisoning the guest.†In Dr. Sheele’s study, over 60 percent of the bedbugs died after volunteers like Mr. Tran took a single pill. Bigger or more regular doses might improve the lethality.
And it’s not as if the drug is rare and dangerous. It’s already in thousands of American households: ivermectin, the active ingredient in the beef-flavored Heartgard Chewables that kill heartworm in dogs.