More than 80,000 people globally die every year from snake bites, according to the World Health Organization. But Tim Friede, director of herpetology at Centivax in San Francisco, is trying to bring that number down — by using himself as a sort of test case.
Friede has allowed himself to be bitten by snakes hundreds of times. He’s also injected himself with snake venom in an effort to build up antibodies that can be used to make antivenom. His case recently appeared in the journal, Nature.
Tim Freide joined The Show to discuss what prompted him to be the guy who injects himself with snake venom and allows himself to be bitten by snakes.
Full conversation
TIM FRIEDE: Well, I’m not the only guy. The creator of what I do with self-immunization, which is called SI, is Bill Haast. And his first injection was 1948, and he has since passed. He made it to 100 and had a great life. I had a chance to meet him back in 1999 and that kind of forever changed my life. He didn’t teach me things specifically, but he was a big inspiration for me with making a human immune to snake bite and not use a horse.
MARK BRODIE: Why is that so important to you? Like, what to you is the upside?
FRIEDE: The upside is 125,000 people a year die, and I’m proud to represent humanity and give a little bit back and use my own body to be studied in the laboratory, to make a better antivenom that we have now.
BRODIE: So for how long have you been doing this? When did you start?
FRIEDE: I started in 2001, in March of 2001, and went all the way to 2018, in November, and then I retired from it. I pushed it really, really hard for a long time, and we didn’t have funding back at that time. So I funded myself for 18 years while raising a family, working construction, working in factories, being a pizza delivery driver, washing dishes. Because I don't have a degree, so I had to take any job I could get, and unfortunately it sucked. But while I was doing that during the day, I’d go to my lab at night and do all my stuff with my snake.
BRODIE: Well, so how did you actually know what to do?
FRIEDE: I didn’t because there’s no book or university that teaches you how to do this. There are books out there, but there’s nothing specific on how many milligrams to inject, how often to do it, do I have high IgG titer levels? Those are unanswered questions, they were unanswered questions, they're not now. But I just set out after I beat snakebite and sat there, it was great. I didn't have to die or use antivenom, although I did use antivenom once. I used 6 vials.
And at that point I just realized that, “How can I get this 8,000 miles away to where people die from snake bite?” And I basically represent people in the old world that are expendable.
BRODIE: So I want to clarify, because you have both been bitten by snakes and injected yourself with venom. How many times have you done each of those things?
FRIEDE: Two hundred bites and over 700 injections, as of 2018. I did more after that — some bites and some injections — but just for my personal, just cause I wanted to do it.
BRODIE: Where did you get the venom?
FRIEDE: Well, I got the venom from people in Florida that bred snakes and they ship them to me. I also get dry venom from all over the place too. I really don’t need snakes to self-immunize. I have a freezer full of venom that’s dried out, and I have enough venom in there to last me a lifetime.
BRODIE: That is not something I ever thought I’d hear a human being say: “I have enough venom to last me a lifetime.”
FRIEDE: Yeah, I do, I do.
BRODIE: So, take me back to 2001, the first time you did this. What was going through your mind?
FRIEDE: Yeah, I was scared. You know, I diluted it down 1 in 10,000 times with the Egyptian cobra venom and monocled cobra venom, and I started with that cause they were dangerous. I could get them.
And I didn't know what it was gonna be like, nobody told me what it was gonna feel like. It's basically like a bee sting. But, the difference is a bee sting only has like 1 or 2 mg. And snakes can have upwards of 400 to 500 mg, sometimes more.
So it's not just qualitative, it's quantitative. And that's the big difference. And then I just realized that all these people are dying from snake bite, and what was gonna be my next step? Which is very hard to do.
BRODIE: So that first time, was that intentional or were you just sort of out and about and you got bitten by a snake?
FRIEDE: No, it was intentional. Yeah, the original cobra bites were intentional. There’s two on September 12 of 2001. About half a year after I started, I took two bites in an hour. It was stupid. My mind wasn't around it. I ended up in ICU, in a coma for four days.
BRODIE: Wow.
FRIEDE: And that’s how I started out, is by failure. I didn’t start by any success whatsoever. There’s no way.
BRODIE: Do you foresee a time when people might no longer die from snake bites?
FRIEDE: They’re always gonna die, because we can’t immunize all of them. They’re not all gonna get the antivenom, and there's such an antivenom shortage right now.
I think just in Africa, they’re making 15,000 vials a year of anti venom, and they need roughly 2 million. That’s just Africa. Now, if you jump over to Asia, where 100,000 people a year die, then jump into India, where 50,000 people a year die — that’s our marketplace. We want to start there.
BRODIE: Was there any point during the last couple of decades when you thought that you were not going to survive this project you were doing?
FRIEDE: At least 12 times. Simply because, number one, it’s painful. I was supporting myself and the family. A couple of times, I passed out after a couple of bites and I’m like, “oh man, I’m going down.” I’ve had anaphylactic shock 12 times. So, it’s been a rough journey, and that's why a lot of people don’t do it. Because you really, really have to be focused. I mean, you can’t have a bad day.
I was dealing with death on a daily basis. And one of the reasons I was bitten so many times is I call it saddle time: The more you do it, the better you get at it. In my case, if you don’t get good at it, you’re gonna die. It doesn’t mean you have to get bit that many times, but my philosophy was the more I’m bitten, the easier it's gonna be. And that's exactly how it was.
BRODIE: Have you ever been bitten by a snake when you weren’t planning on being bitten by a snake?
FRIEDE: Oh yeah, I was bitten milking snakes. I’ve had them just crawl up my arm up on a hook and bite me, not all the time. Almost all my bites are self-induced. And I did that to prove a point : that I can beat snake bite. Because back in the day there were a lot of naysayers — which is fun, I love naysayers — that said I couldn’t take a bite from a black mamba, or taipan, or a cobra, or a rattlesnake or krait, you name it. And I did that.
This will hopefully be the first time in 125 years since Albert Calmette, who basically created antivenom, that we could maybe change that to make a better product and to not use horses. But to use what we can make in a lab and mass produce it in the millions, antibody-wise. I sleep good at night knowing that I used my own body, put my life on the line for people that don’t have a voice like I do.
