Total Chad Gets Bit by Hundreds Venomous Snakes to Develop Universal Antivenom

Image by Getty / Futurism Developments It sounds like the origin story of a superhero, but there's nothing fictional about what Tim Friede's accomplished. Since 2001, the 57-year-old Wisconsin man has let himself be bitten by venomous snakes on an incredible 200 occasions, inuring his immune system to the serpents' deadly toxins. Cobras, black mambas, you name it: Friede has weathered them all. That's on top of injecting himself with over 650 doses of increasingly potent amounts of venom. "They want to kill me," Friede told NPR. "I want to survive." And in building such a remarkable tolerance, Friede's badass quest may help save other people's lives, too. Scientists have identified the antibodies in Friede's blood responsible for neutralizing the toxins, in what they believe is a major milestone towards developing a universal antivenom — a cure-all antidote for any lethal snakebite. As reported in a new study in the journal Cell, the researchers combined some of Friede's superpow ... Read full article.