Things Looking Up For Impotence-Sufferering California Man Thanks To Marine Worm

Fingers are crossed and hopeful thoughts abound for 58-year-old Cal "Cappy" LaBouche, of Elkhorn Slough, California, who is under 24-hour intensive care following surgery early this morning. Barring complications, Cappy will be the first man to successfully receive an experimental inter-species skin graft that is hoped to cure his chronic erectile dysfunction. Best of all for ocean science fans, the graft comes from a marine worm known as a Fat Innkeeper worm.

Fat Innkeeper worms (Urechis caupo), or Spoon worms, belong to the phylum Echiura. Although there are only about 150 species of echiurans known today, they are quite common in some marine environments. Fat Innkeepers are common in intertidal mudflats of the northern California coast. It is known as the "innkeeper worm" because a number of marine organisms, including small crabs, polychaete worms, and fish live as commensals inside the worm's burrow. Normally it inhabits a U-shaped burrow.

Why choose a little-known marine worm for transplant surgery? It's all about the remarkable hydrostatic skeleton. Many marine worms live in soft mud or sand deposits. Their elongated body forms permit effective burrowing movements despite a lack of rigid internal skeletons to support the muscles of locomotion. Muscles in the body wall work against the enclosed fluid contents of the body to allow burrowing actions and other body movements. The fluids cannot escape and are essentially incompressible. As such, they provide a hydrostatic skeleton for the muscles of the body wall.

Like all muscles, these muscles can work only by contracting. When the circular muscles of a worm's body contract, its diameter decreases, squeezing its hydrostatic skeleton and forcing the body to elongate, much like squeezing a long inflated balloon at one end and causing it to expand at the other end. The mastermind behind this ambitious procedure, visiting Spanish surgeon Dr. Gusano Allivera, first speculated that a worm could provide relief to victims of impotence after watching a Fat Inkeeper on display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, "The worm contracted and elongated in a plexiglass tube and I was instantly stunned. I was so transfixed by the worm, I never even made it to the sea otter exhibit."

Anyone who has picked-up a soft Innkeeper while digging during low tide in a mudflat at Elkhorn Slough has realized the remarkable strength of the hydrostatic skeleton. By compressing fluids within its body, a flaccid worm can transform into a rigid tube in a matter of seconds. A transformation almost as fascinating as the recently discovered ability of sea cucumbers to manipulate their external skin from hard when danger threatens, to soft and flexible in safe conditions. "If we can somehow combine the hydrostatic skeleton of the Inkeeper worm with the dermal rigidity of the sea cucumber, I think we will have a winning graft combination to battle erectile dysfunction head on," remarked Dr Allivera at an early morning press conference.

Erectile dysfunction (ED), sometimes called "impotence," is the repeated inability to get or keep an erection firm enough for sexual intercourse. The word "impotence" may also be used to describe other problems that interfere with sexual intercourse and reproduction, such as lack of sexual desire and problems with ejaculation or orgasm. Using the term erectile dysfunction makes it clear that those other problems are not involved.

Erectile dysfunction, or ED, can be a total inability to achieve erection, an inconsistent ability to do so, or a tendency to sustain only brief erections. In older men, ED usually has a physical cause, such as disease, injury, or side effects of drugs. Incidence increases with age: About 5 percent of 40-year-old men and between 15 and 25 percent of 65-year-old men experience ED.

The exhausted though buoyant Cappy LaBouche, a retired performing party clown well-known and much beloved by generations of children from the Monterey Peninsula to San Francisco, told reporters his impotence began to manifest itself in 2000 but became chronic in 2005. "The prospect of having the wind back in my sails again is exciting," said Labouche from his hospital bed, "The missus and I are planning a second honeymoon as soon as I can walk!"

More information and a full explanation of the delicate procedure has been posted here.