Medical tests like the common colonoscopy may soon go the way of the dinosaur. Thanks to an ingenious invention by a Burnsville, Minnesota man, doctors will soon have a new weapon in their arsenal against gastrointestinal diseases like cancer, acid-reflux and ulcers.

Derick Hollington, a 71-year-old retired welder and sometimes-tinkerer, has created in his garage what may become a genuine breakthrough with a patent-pending invention officially dubbed “Apparatus and Method for Minimally-Invasive Investigation and Analysis of a Human Gastrointestinal System Using a Rope.”

Or as Hollington likes to call it: rectal floss.

I just got to thinking one day last summer while I was cleaning my lawnmower’s carburetor with a pipe-cleaner…hey! why not do the same thing with people and run a big hunk of good, stiff baling twine or rope through ‘em to flush things out?,” said Hollington, sipping a cold Grain Belt at his kitchen table. “Ya just tie a fishing sinker to the end of some hefty string, feed it down the patient’s throat, through the stomach, around the intestines, and out the…um…back end. Then grab the end and pull it all the way through. Doctors can look at what’s on the twine and see what’s going on inside. Just make sure you don’t go the other way, he he!”

Hollington’s creative spark has created significant buzz within the local medical community.

“For a guy who never went to medical school, this is brilliant,” exclaimed Burton Lapinski, a fellow at the proctology department of the University of Minnesota Medical School. “It grabs everything within the digestive tract, dislodges it and pulls it right out, like a core sample from a drilling rig. It makes diagnosis a snap.”

The inventor is confident that after some clinical testing the FDA will approve his rectal floss system for human treatment.

“I already tried it on my dog, just to make sure it works,” added Hollingson. “He won’t come near me now, just hides under the bed…poor thing. The wife wants nothing to do with it either, but maybe I can scare up a volunteer or two from the neighborhood. Just a little more testing, and it should be good to go.”

Hollingson is now trying to market his new rectal floss invention. Interested investors are encouraged to contact his agent at (952) 564-7797 for more information.