Tim Friede has been bitten by snakes hundreds of times, many times on purpose. Now, scientists study their blood in the hope of creating a better treatment for snake bites.
Friede has always fascinated fascination with reptiles and other poisonous creatures. He used to extract poison from scorpions and spiders as a hobby and had dozens of snakes in his house in Wisconsin.
Hoping to protect from snake bites – and what he calls “Simple curiosity”-, began to inject small doses of snake venom and then the quantity was increasing little by little to try to tolerance. Then he let the snakes bite him.
At first, I was very afraid, “said Friede.” But the more you do it, the better you go, the more you feel calm. “
Although no doctor or medical emergency technician – no one, actually – would ever suggest that this is a good idea, experts affirm that their method tracks the functioning of the body. When the immune system is exposed to the toxins of the snake venomdevelop antibodies that can neutralize it. If it is a small amount of poison, the body can react before it is overwhelmed. And if it is a poison that the body has already seen, it can react more quickly and support major exhibitions.
Friede has resisted snake bites and injections for almost two decades and still retains the refrigerator full of poison. In videos published on his YouTube channel, he shows marks of swollen fangs in his arms by black mamba bites, taipán and water cobra.
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I wanted to take the limits as close as possible to death, to the point of being practically on the verge of collapse, and then get away from there, ”he said.
But Friede also wanted to help. He sent an email to all the scientists he could find, asking them to study the tolerance he had developed.
And there is a need: around 110 thousand people die each year due to snake bites, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, manufacturing antivenene is expensive and difficult. It is often created by injecting poison to large mammals, such as horses, and collecting the antibodies they produce. These antivenians are usually effective only against specific snake species and, sometimes, They can produce adverse reactions due to its non -human origin.
When Peter Kwong, from Columbia University, heard about Friede, said: “Wow, how unusual we had a very special individual with incredible antibodies that he created over 18 years.”
In a study published in Cell magazine, Kwong and collaborators shared what they could do with Friede’s unique blood: They identified two antibodies that neutralize the poison of many snake species different with the objective of one day producing a treatment that could offer wide protection.
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It is a very early investigation: the antivenene was only tested in mice, and the researchers are still years of making human trials. And while its experimental treatment is promising against the snake group that includes mambas and cobras, it is not effective against vipers, which include snakes such as rattlesnake.
Despite the promise, there is a lot of work to do, ”said Nicholas Casewell, a snake bites researcher at the Liverpool Tropical Medicine School, in an email. Casewell did not participate in the new study.
Friede’s path has not been exempt from stumbling. Among them: he said after A serious snake bite He had to amputate part of the finger. And some particularly serious cobra bites took him to the hospital.
Friede now works in Centivax, a company that tries to develop the treatment and that helped finance the study. He is enthusiastic that his 18 -year -old Odyssey can one day save lives from snake bites, but his message to those who feel inspired to follow their steps is simple: “Do not,” he said.
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