Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 100s of Times

His experiments nearly ended soon after they began. On Sept. 12, 2001, crazed by the terrorist attack of the previous day and by the death of a friend a few days earlier, he let himself be bitten by two cobras. They were his first bites by live snakes, and he had not built up enough immunity. He was fine after the first bite, but after the second, he felt cold, his eyes started to droop and he couldn’t talk. He blacked out and woke up from a coma in a hospital four days later. His wife was furious, but he was angrier with himself. He vowed to become more methodical in his work, carefully measuring out doses of venom and timing his bites. “I’d work all day, come home, play with the kids and the family, and go downstairs and do my stuff all night long, wake up and do it again,” he said. There were other mishaps — accidental bites, anaphylactic shocks, hives, blackouts. Mr. Friede describes himself as a nondegree scientist, but “there’s no college in the world that can teach you how to ... Read full article.