The man, who has not been identified, came back July 31 with flesh-eating screw-worm maggots on his scalp, the Associated Press reported Sunday. Doctors believe the eggs were laid in an open head-wound while the man was in the Brazilian rain forest, where the filthy fly thrives.

Although the man has been successfully treated, officials fear that some of the maggots might have escaped his house and landed in nearby soil, where they could become flies within a few days and then mate. Health officials fear that the re-introduction of the deadly screw-worm fly (Chrysomya bezziana), which was "eradicated" in America in the 1970s, could wipe out cows, goats and even humans.

"We are taking every appropriate measure to prevent the larvae from spreading," Chris Bishop, a veterinarian with the Alabama agriculture department, told the AP.

'Literally Eaten Alive'

The screw-worm fly is about twice the size of typical house fly, but its appetite more resembles the common vampire. Indigenous to the warm, wet regions of the U.S., Mexico and Central America, the adult female screws are attracted to "wounds and orifices of warm-blooded animals, including human beings, and invade cuts, castration wounds, newborns' navels and tick bites," reported The Independent of London.

Each fly lays around 200 eggs on the edge of the wound. The fresh maggots fatten up for five days, then burrow head-first into the flesh. The feeding frenzy creates a disgusting stench, which in turn attracts other flies and undesirables to the victim.

"The infested animals cannot readily dislodge the larvae by licking or biting," specialist E.F. Knipling wrote. "Animals are literally eaten alive. In areas of high fly densities, infested animals not found are virtually doomed for a slow traumatic death."

When given the chance, the screw-worm fly "frequently attacks man," scientist Leland Howard told the Buffalo News. "The most common cases are those where the fly has laid its eggs in the nostrils."

Epidemic Proportions

The United States successfully wiped out most screw-worm fly populations in the Americas by mating it with sterile males, producing eggs that did not hatch. Worldwide population was limited to deep rain forests, and countries like Papua New Guinea.

But in 1989, the fly mysteriously re-emerged in the more dry confines of Libya, which at the time was America's most hated enemy. The flies spread sporadically throughout the Middle East, and this year they have devastated the U.S.' latest pariah of choice: Iraq.

At least 40 Iraqis have been devoured by the evil maggots, according to a new report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. Twelve of the country's 18 provinces have been hit, with livestock losses reaching 50 percent or more.

"Iraq is the latest victim in what appears to be a deliberate introduction of the screw-worm as a biological weapon," charged George Pumphrey, a biological warfare specialist based in Germany, according to The Independent. "In Libya ... 2,000 animals were killed. It was exemplarily combated, yet by the following year it covered 35,000 square kilometers, and killed 12,000 heads of stock."

More than 57,000 cases of screw-worm had been found in Iraq by March of this year, according to the Financial Times. The UN says the infestations have reached "epidemic proportions," and could threaten the whole region.

"This literally constitutes an explosion," wrote UNFAO agronomist Henning Steinfeld. "Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria are seriously threatened. To a lesser extent are Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon."

The Nixon Connection

Perhaps because of its name, perhaps because of its suspicious appearances in enemy countries, the screw-worm fly has taken an unusually prominent role in U.S. political debate. On July 31 -- the day the Alabama man brought maggots home from Brazil -- the House of Representatives invoked the insect in a discussion about science funding.

"I remember when we first started debating this subject of research grant titles, one popular target was a grant titled 'The sex life of the screw worm,'" said Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.). "But actually, as we pointed out many times, this innocuous piece of research has saved the cattle industry of Texas hundreds of times over what the cost of the actual research was."

In 1990 George Bush gave "the most significant licensing activity" waiver to bypass Libya sanctions to U.S. scientists who assisted the UNFAO in its screw-worm eradication there.

But it was Richard Nixon himself who was fixated on the screw worm, according to Edward Jay Epstein's book "Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America."

According to memos written by administration official Egil Krogh, Jr., Nixon became consumed with "an insect which could consume poppy crops."

"The President became excited about the idea and called Secretary of Agriculture [Hardin] in order to get information on the insect which he had heard to be bred in such a way as to insure its own destruction ... The president remarked that the insect died after intercourse. A member of the group suggested that this insect be called 'the screw worm.'"

The president wanted Edward Land, the founder and developer of the Polaroid camera, and William Lear, the founder of Lear Jets, "brought in to help develop this concept." One week later, on June 17, 1971, Nixon asked Congress for a special supplementary line-item for the war on heroin that would give "two million dollars to the Department of Agriculture for research and development of herbicides which can be used to destroy growths of narcotics-producing plants without adverse ecological effects."

With NASA and the private sector all chipping in, "the Department of Agriculture actually created a voracious screw worm that would rapidly proliferate and destroy any poppy field in the world," Epstein writes. A plan was drafted to introduce the worm to Laos and Pakistan, from where it would soon spread to Burma and Afghanistan, and "be expected to destroy the world's poppy crops within a year."

But administration officials were worried that the worm's appetite might switch to rice and grain, so "the screw worm was relegated to a long-term experimental program which would be made operational only if it produced a categorically host-specific weevil that would also stop at international borders."