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Snake Season: What to Do if a Venomous Snake Bites You?
- Tim Friede, a former truck mechanic from Two Rivers, Wisconsin, allowed himself to be bitten over 200 times by snakes from 2000 to 2018 to develop immunity against venom.
- Friede's practice of mithridatism aimed to achieve total immunity and escalated after he took a class on milking snakes for venom in childhood.
- Immunologist Jacob Glanville, who shifted focus to antivenoms in 2017, studied Friede's blood antibodies to develop a broader antivenom with a drug called varespladib.
- A recent study in the Cell journal shows Friede's antibodies protect against multiple snake venoms, supporting hopes for a universal antivenom to address 138,000 annual deaths worldwide.
- Friede stopped self-injecting venom in 2018 to reduce liability for Centivax but remains proud of contributing to medical history and hopes to resume exposure carefully in the future.
73 Articles
73 Articles
Tim Freide started this experiment in 2001, when he actually had other intentions. And he realized, then, that it could help develop a more effective antivenin. His blood is now studied, but people from...
ABC FOX Montana
Man who let snakes bite him 200 times spurs new antivenom hope
Tim Friede was feeling particularly down on the day after the September 11 attacks, so he went to his basement and let two of the world's deadliest snakes bite him.
They woke up from their winter hibernation in the spring, and these days they have already emerged from their burrows in all parts of the country - snakes may be a great fear of man, but they are also very important to the ecosystem and in their natural control of rodents. In Israel, there are nine types of venomous snakes that you can encounter on a trip, at a summer camp, camping or just wandering in nature. We asked Dr. Maya Saar, zoologist, …
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