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Injecting Snake Venom

By Grant
Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

Wow, this is almost unbelievable - self injecting snake venom!!?extracting snake-venom

This guy, Steve Ludwin, has been injecting himself with various types of snake venom for over 20 years!

At first I felt totally against this, but after watching the video and seeing where Steve is coming from my feelings have changed a little.

He’s passionate, honest and realistic. He doesn’t pretend that he is invincible or act like he knows what he is doing.

On an intellectual and scientific level he doesn’t have a clue what these experiments are actually doing to him or his body but he has a knowledge gained from experience that very few can match.

Although I’d never even think of injecting snake venom myself, one starts to see that there may be some real benefits to the ‘work’ that Steve has been doing if he could be paired up with a good snake venom researcher.

Injecting yourself with snake venom…! Unbelievable?

You HAVE to watch this…

(Heads up to sensitive viewers - there is some swearing in this video)

 

Now that you have watched this interesting take on snake venom research…

What do you think - is this science or stupidity? Could what Steve is doing benefit science or are these simply cowboy antics that should be stopped?

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Categories : Snake Awareness
  • http://www.facebook.com/Devin.F.1991 Devin Finaughty

    Very interesting! I’ve heard rumours of people doing this, but never seen an in-depth review like this. Steve has the mark of a true scientist: he’s intrigued by a phenomenon and is investigating it through “hard” experimentation. For this he can be commended, and he certainly isn’t alone. Self-experimentation has a LONG history in science (just read the series of books by Alex Boese). But I definitely agree with you, Grant, that he could greatly benefit from linking up with a good snake venom researcher. If his pursuit for knowledge and willingness for self-experimentation is paired with- and founded on sound scientific procedure in a controlled, measureable manner, I believe that the benefits to science and medicine in terms of knowledge gained could be significant!

    • http://www.capesnakeconservation.com/ grantsmith

      I tend to agree with you Devin. Let’s just hope that he doesn’t overdo it on the ‘juice’ to soon. One of the hurdles in antivenin development and disease busting drugs synthesised from snake venom has been the lack of human guinea-pigs; perhaps a guy like Steve holds the key to some important medical breakthroughs.

      • http://www.facebook.com/Devin.F.1991 Devin Finaughty

        Definitely - on both accounts! He’s got some nasty-looking wounds and had a few close encounters. All the more reason to start adding some solid scientific backing…

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