Injecting Snake Venom

Injecting  Snake Venom

My name is Etienne van den Berg and I started self immunization (injecting snake venom) in 2014.

Now to most people just the idea of a slithery snake is enough to cause nightmares for a week, let alone injecting the deadly serpents toxin into ones body . This blog with help put things into perspective.

Quick basic understanding of Vaccines

Vaccines have been called the best public health achievement of the last century, but it’s in fact a rather old idea, a thousand years ago physicians crushed up scabs from small pox victims and blew the powder into victim’s noses. After a mild illness these patients developed immunity. Centuries later Dr Edward Jenner deliberately infected healthy people with cow pox, producing small pox immunity.

Vaccines contain a weakened bacteria or virus that mimics natural infection, triggering an immune response from the body. The immune system rapidly builds an army of cells to attack that specific infection, destroying the weakened invaders before they cause damage. A number of specialized immune system cells remain called memory cells that can quickly detect and destroy later encounters with the disease.

Let’s talk about venom

Venom is one of evolution's greatest achievements. Venom is such a potent and successful weapon,  it has evolved at least 10 separate times within dramatically different animals example: snakes, lizards,centipedes, bees, cone snails, newts, platypus and even a primate

Venom is so evolved and diverse that within the same species of snake, the venom composition can differ from one locality to the next depending on what they eat.

How is antivenin (aka anti-venom) made?

Currently antivenin is made from antibodies produced by injecting animals like sheep and horses with diluted venom. A horse example will be injected with tiny amounts of venom – the dilutions will gradually become stronger as the animals builds up antibodies in its blood. When the antibodies have peaked, roughly a gallon of horse blood is extracted to go to a lab where the antibodies will be distracted from the blood to create antivenin.

Thank goodness for antivenin... right?

Although antivenin is a great medical achievement, it is not perfect! Because animals like sheep and horses are used to produce antivenin, it means that foreign proteins to humans can possibly cause an allergic reaction example anaphylaxis. It is said that roughly 3 out of a hundred snake bite patients can get anaphylaxis from antivenin.

Now don’t get me wrong... if i am fighting for my life due to snake bite, I will drink antivenin if I need to, if that means to survive.

So... what now?

You would think in today’s day and age that the human race has everything figured out and that we are invincible... the reality is that as a race we have only scratched the surface in regards to science, discovery, technology, you name it...

Much needed research still needs to continue being done to create more effective vaccines and other medicines.

Antivenin has proved successful and has saved countless lives across the world, but it isn’t perfect, yet.

What is Self Immunization(Injecting Venom) ?

Self Immunization is basically a process of gaining immunity to venom, but instead of diluted venom being injected into animals like sheep and horses, the venom is deliberately self injected into a person. The human body produces antibodies, just like sheep and horses, building up immunity and protecting the body from the deadly toxin.

The Legend, Bill Haast

Bill Haast was the director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a facility that produces snake venom for medical research. Bill Haast Extracted venom from the deadliest snakes in the world, extracting venom up to a 100 times a day, usually in front of an audience of paying customers for publicity and educational purposes.

Soon after opening the Serpentarium, the curious Bill Haast began experimenting with immunity to snake venom by injecting himself with gradually increasing quantities of venom, injecting himself once a week with over 32 species of the world’s deadliest snakes, a practice also called mithridatism, today know as self immunization.

At the age of 85, Bill Haast has been bitten 162 times, by snakes with venom enough to kill an elephant.

Bill Haast donated his antibody rich blood to snake bite victims that used it as antivenin. Bill was made an honorary member of Venezuela, by saving 22 peoples lives.

Bill Haast firmly believed that the snake venom has kept him healthy and claims never being sick once, since starting injecting venom.

Bill Haast died a few weeks shy of turning 101 years old.

 A little more about Mithridatism

Mithridatism, dates back thousands of years and stories can be found across the world for example India, during the rule of king Chandragupta Maurya (320-298 BC) they selected beautiful girls and administered poison in small amounts, until they grew up, making them insensitive to poison. These girls grow up to become Vishakanyas (visha=poison, kanya= maiden) These Vishakanyas were employed to kill enemies, as they believed making love to a Vishakanya, resulted in death.

It is also believed that Russian mystic Rasputin, survived a poisoning attempt due to mithridatism.

Certain snake hunters in tribes tattoo’d themselves with venom to protect them, helping them build up immunity to snake bite.

The famous Rod of Asclepius, medical symbol is used today around the world.

The serpent-entwined rod wielded by the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicinal arts in Greek Mythology.

 Why did I decide to start injecting venom?

I was fascinated with the ability of the human body becoming immune to venom. It is extraordinary. Bill Haast and many other people around the world who self immunize claim, that they haven't been sick and a few claim to only have minor flue once a year.

 As a Senior National Swimmer at the time, recovery is very important and as an athlete you often struggle with your immune system going through dips during hard training and racing throughout the year. I heard a story about the Chinese being busted for injecting cobra venom into horses to enhance their performance. As an athlete, this makes you start thinking.

People often get the wrong idea about performance enhancing drugs, because they think that these drugs are taken before important races. As an athlete I was 100% drug free throughout my swimming career. I don't know a lot about sports enhancing drugs, but I do know that it will be administered and taken during the off-season in order for the athlete to out perform themselves during hard months of training, that will benefit preparation and performance later, when the drugs will no longer be detectable in their system. 

At the time I was going through a tough time in my swimming career, struggling with injuries. I also became sick often. For 2 months I was sick on and off. You can maybe say I was a bit desperate and I strongly started considering self immunization, purely for the immune boosting qualities.

Some might say: "What is wrong with driving 5min to the pharmacy and picking up some B12 injections or immune boosting tablets?"

I regularly injected B12 and I took my various vitamins and protein shakes, but it seems 6 hours of intense training each day, just took too much out of my body. 

Not soon after I gathered the guts to start self immunizing, I found out I had a torn groin muscle after struggling with injury for majority of the year. My training was put on hold leading up to the surgery and unfortunately also due to lack of financial support going forward, my swimming career came to an end.

I started injecting weak dilutions, each week of forest cobra venom, a few weeks before my surgery. 

I remember going to the hospital for my surgery and I had to fill in a form asking if I am injecting myself with anything. I ticked "no" I would be crazy to tell them I have purposefully injected myself with venom a few weeks before surgery.

The surgery was a complete success and afterwards I continued doing my venom injections, adding snouted cobra venom with the forest cobra venom.

I could feel my immune system become stronger as my body produced more and more antibodies, as my dilutions become stronger and stronger.

There were some tough injections and I often went to bed with the hopes of waking up the next day. Sometimes it will feel like I have a tennis ball in my leg for 3 days, until the swelling started subsiding. 

Picture: Me with my snouted cobra

Some injections I would be aware of neurotoxic symptoms for a few minutes after injecting, like experiencing heavy eyes and pain in the chest and rare occasions slurred speech. 

These symptoms will go away and as my dilutions become stronger, I experienced less symptoms and swelling at the injection site. Swelling also subsided a lot quicker as my body became stronger. 

Picture: When I started self immunizing with Western diamondback rattlesnake. As I built up antibodies and made my dilutions stronger over time, I no longer experience swelling nor bruising from the venom.

I recently added Western and Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, Cape Cobra and Copperhead venom to my weekly injections with the hope to reach hyper immunity one day which is extremely difficult and dangerous to achieve.

Picture of Tim Friede who has reached hyper immunity, Taking a bite from a Black Mamba.

Talking about the future

There are new research being done with the help of people like Tim Friede and Steve Ludwin.

Hopefully one day we will be able to understand the venom better in order to create a much more effective antivenin and possibly even a universal antivenin, not even mentioning progression made in medicinal research. Hopefully future venom derived medicine can help beat Cancer, Ebola and HIV/AIDS. 

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