FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists unveil magnetic cure to clean up blood. “Scientists said Sunday they had invented a device that uses a magnet to extract bacteria, fungi and toxins from blood, potentially throwing a lifeline to patients with sepsis and other infections. The external gadget, tested so far in rats but not yet humans, could be adapted one day for stripping Ebola and other viruses from blood. Acting rather like a spleen, the invention uses magnetic nanobeads coated with a genetically-engineered human blood protein called MBL. The MBL binds to pathogens and toxins, which can then be ‘pulled out’ with a magnet, the developers wrote in the journal Nature Medicine.”

Since I lack a spleen, I’m particularly interested.