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For nearly 30 years, London-based reptile enthusiast and musician Steve Ludwin has been injecting snake venom—a practice that has almost killed him.
It may now help save thousands of lives, as researchers search for a new antidote based on his body's response to the toxic fluids.
"It sounds very crazy what I am doing but it turns out that it potentially has lots of health benefits," Ludwin, the tattooed 51-year-old told AFP in the living room of his home in the British capital.
Ludwin demonstrated his decades-old habit by firmly holding the head of a green Pope's tree viper—Trimeresurus popeiorum—and extracting a few drops of its venom.
Minutes later, he has injected the fluid into his arm using a syringe.
The scientists hope to produce cheaper anti-venom from the antibodies in his blood.
[Please note that this is very dangerous and Mr. Ludwin has almost died a number of times. Don't try this at home! - Ed]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @07:15PM (5 children)
Probably for the same reason that some beekeepers purposefully get stung from time to time.
The theory is that if you expose the body to a toxin that the body will figure out how to deal with it. And, there's good reason to be skeptical of it. Considering the various medical practices in various parts of the world, if this kind of thing worked, you'd think it would already have been determined to work and people living in snake infested areas would be doing it.
In this case, it's going to be highly dependent on the specific snake venom he chose to use, other venoms work in other ways and as such may or may not allow for this to happen.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday November 11 2017, @08:15PM (4 children)
If you are exposed to poison ivy with a large contact and you've never been exposed before you'll get a huge and very painful rash. If you start the season by rubbing a leaf very briefly on a small portion of skin, you get a much smaller rash that goes away quickly. Then go do it again, a brief rub on a small bit of skin somewhere else. The rash response will be significantly suppressed in comparison to the first time. If at this point, you get that large heavy exposure, it's not going to hurt you nearly as bad, nor nearly as long.
Of course if you can easily avoid the ivy entirely, that's a lot less work and even less pain, so it's no wonder that people prefer it.
Also, there are a couple of real problems. First off, even though it works with poison ivy, and it works with bee venom, and lots of other things, that doesn't mean the same logic works with all poisons. Some of them will just build up until they kill you. Very important to be sure of which type it is. Also, even with the right type of poison, the human body can react in more than one way. *Sometimes* you might start the season with the traditional little rub of ivy (and if you do it every year you may not be expecting any noticeable rash at all) and get exactly the normal to the usual result - it triggers a hyper-response instead. The best I can tell this is quite rare but no one seems to know why it happens or what triggers it, so again that's a good argument just to avoid the stuff instead, if you can.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 11 2017, @08:53PM
'Round these parts, we have Poison Oak instead. But yeah, thanks to Batman, we know that physical contact with plants can also be unpleasant.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @09:15PM (2 children)
No one knows anything about why poison ivy/oak causes the reaction it does and why they seem to only affect humans. It is another one of those extremely commonplace and interesting phenomena that researchers don't care to study, or funding agencies don't care to fund, for some reason.
Supposedly the best way to become temporarily "immune" (actually non-immune since the rash is an immune response...) is to let goats feed on the stuff then drink their milk. Watch out for the goat scams if you go looking to buy/sell//rent any goats though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @05:08PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urushiol-induced_contact_dermatitis [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @09:54PM
Yes? Please quote the part you think relevant.