Snake bites kill up to 138,000 people per year, and they permanently disable even more. Tim Friede was almost one of those people. In fact, the Wisconsin man spent four days in a coma after two cobra bites. After he recovered, he began exposing himself to low doses of snake venom to protect himself against future bites. Now, after 200 snake bites and 600 venom injections, he not only has immunity [protection] to many different types of snake bites, but his blood is also being used to make a medicine that could protect people around the world.
Some species of snakes are venomous. This means that when they bite, they inject toxins. Toxins are poisonous substances produced by living things. Different types of toxins affect the body in different ways.
Humans have developed antivenoms for treating snake bites. Antivenom is a medicine used to treat snake bites. The problem is that there are 600 species of venomous snakes. Antivenoms are usually made for one type of snake bite or for bites from a few different types of snakes. As a result, the correct antivenoms are not always available. And doctors don’t always know what type of antivenom to use because they don’t know what type of snake the bite came from.
But researchers wondered if there was a way to make an antivenom that would work for more types of snake bites. They used Tim Friede’s blood to find out.
Though there is still more testing to do, the initial results were promising. In tests on mice, the antivenom was fully or partially effective against venom from 19 different species of the world’s deadliest snakes.
What Do You Think? Was what Tim Friede did more heroic or dangerous? Explain.
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