This is Planet Money from NPR.

Some medical problems get solved the traditional way.

You know, enormous pharmaceutical companies or university labs that have huge budgets and

run trials, that sort of thing.

But some solutions to medical problems take a much stranger path.

Like they start with the tragic tale, lead to an encounter with an 80s rock star and end

up with an obsessed neuroscientist putting himself on the operating table to find a treatment.

You know, that path.

This is that second stranger kind of story.

Did you mind just saying your name?

My name is Dave Catania.

Dave was there for the first part of this story, the tragic tale.

This was back in 2001.

And Dave was part of an expedition put together by the California Academy of Sciences.

I was the one fish guy on the trip.

Dave is an Ick Theologist, which is a fancy way of saying, he is interested in looking

for cool fish specimens on this expedition in the jungles of Myanmar.

What was your impression as you started to walk in?

Hot.

There were leeches there, which were fun.

You've stand in one place long enough and you'd see them coming towards you.

Dave remembers the leeches because, of course, you'd remember the leeches.

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