The Human Antivenom Project

https://www.outsideonline.com/2395803/snakebite-antivenom-tim-friede

by mstats • 7 years ago

116 18 7 years ago

For science!

But seriously. I don't know if I want to nominate the guy for a medal or put him in jail. The incident with milking a cobra while drunk is criminally reckless, not just to his own health, but also to whoever runs into the now probably escaping snake next. He might have had proper precautions in place, like snake-proof rooms (which is harder than it sounds), but somehow I doubt it....

dreamcompiler2• 7 years ago

Keeping hot snakes in your home is definitely not a good idea. You will get bitten eventually, and you'd better keep your own supply of antivenin since there's not much cobra antivenin in the US.

On the plus side, an escaped cobra probably won't live long in the wilds of Wisconsin. No other cobras to mate with, different food supply, and it's too cold.

bayesian_horse3• 7 years ago

Keeping antivenom on hand isn't that common for keepers. Antivenom production is limited, so is its shelf life, it makes more sense to keep it at centralized locations. In any case, doctors prefer not to give antivenom, because it can be worse than the bite itself.

Even tropical snakes can stay alive in a home, or a settlement. I wouldn't expect them to breed, except of course in Florida where apparently all kinds of reptiles can become pests.

itronitron• 7 years ago

> Glanville took his code and left his prestigious job at Pfizer. ... . He now licenses his software and antibody library back to Pfizer...

How the hell did that happen?

RyanShook• 7 years ago

Very confused about this as well. Maybe he brought the code with him to Pfizer before starting?

gwern• 7 years ago

Perhaps he negotiated hardball: "I am the only one who understands this code or how to use it; you own the copyright, yes, but without me, it's useless, and will bitrot within years. I am leaving, and if I don't have it, I will simply rewrite it from scratch, and better, though it will take me a lot of time I would rather not spend and risks failure. So you have a choice: you can license it to me and we can share the results, or you can be a dog in the manger and pay full price for my future work. Choose."

mynegation• 7 years ago

This guy is literally a honey badger.

In the famous video that brought in the meme [1], honey badger experiences the lethargic reaction to the several bites from a cobra it hunts but eventually recovers. And this ability seems to be inborn, after thousands and maybe millions years of natural selection. So there is definitely a precedent.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

sitkack• 7 years ago

This is a crazy story on so many levels, so much so that feels like fiction, Glanville is basically Nikola Tesla of biotech.

diggan• 7 years ago

This guy has been doing it for 30 years now (injecting himself with snake venom): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcbqB0pFRPA

And also a longer but older documentary-short about the same person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q_m-rDUNw0

Apparently, the same guy (Steve Ludwin) actually has his own snake show on VICE nowadays. You can see all videos about him (and ton of snakes) here: https://video.vice.com/en_uk/topic/steve-ludwin

emilfihlman• 7 years ago

It's sad that we let "etchics" get in the way of research, especially in cases like these. It's not ethics anymore, it's just fear of someone ruining your career by touting "ethics" violations, not actual ethics issues.

js2• 7 years ago

If you’re of a certain age and grew up in Miami, you’re familiar with the now defunct Miami Serpentarium and its director, Bill Haast. Haast lived to 100, having been bitten over 172 times. He similarly donated his blood for medical research and also tried to build immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Haast

Pretty amazing story. I hope Tim Friede lives as long!

psudmant• 7 years ago

"Antivenom" is not a word. This article is mistakenly using this word to refer to antivenin.

reallydude• 7 years ago

It's a word that people use. Despite assertions that there are definitive word lists for languages, all words are made up over time.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antivenom

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/antivenom

You are free to pursue this futile fight.

bjornsing• 7 years ago

Cool story. AFAIK antibodies aren’t cells though, and you can’t “DNA sequence” them.

robbiep• 7 years ago

They get a bunch of the science wrong, but some of it right in that typical popsci way.

For instance, it is possible to isolate the DNA sequence that codes for the functional and variable domains of the antibody. But, it’s not possible to just take that and ‘grow it in bacteria’ as they say.

The construction of an antibody is very complex, with lots of cross-coupling and special confirmations that need to be induced by helper proteins in order to reach the final shape.

A bacterial cell doesn’t have the requisite ‘machinery’ to use a factory analogy, to do this.

When we make humanised antibodies for immunotherapy for cancer treatments we fuze a B/Plasma cell with a cancer cell to make it immortal, and then hope that the cell will churn out copies of itself and the antibody forever. That’s one of the reasons pharma companies can charge $50,000 per dose... its time consuming, it’s fragile... and also, once they’ve done it, no-one else can come along and build the same thing (as you might be able to do by knocking off some chemical steps to make a drug)

The Human Antivenom Project

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