THE MAN WHO INJECTS VENOM animal planet march 16th

THE MAN WHO INJECTS VENOM
World Premiere Tuesday, March 16, at 9 PM (ET/PT)

Steve Ludwin is an American living in London England who regularly injects the deadly venom from his pet snakes into his body. He is one of a handful of extraordinary ‘self-immunisers’ who believe that venom has amazing medicinal properties. Steve is about to embark on a bizarre journey of discovery from his home in London to Florida where he will meet world renowned doctors and fellow ‘self-immunizers’ to learn if this baffling self-experimentation could lead to a ground breaking medical discovery or possibly an early grave.

Has any one got any more info

I got told about this a while ago I think... though I thought it was going to be on channel 5

Maybe I am thinking of a different programme....

I copy and pasted the above straight from the animal planet website.

Andy.

Steve is coming over mine this coming weekend, i might find a bit more out about the show then.

cheers, Tom

Channel 5 Wed. 14th of April in the uk apparently.

O ok it is the one I am thinking of then

Should be worth a watch.

Tom Charlton wrote:Steve is coming over mine this coming weekend, i might find a bit more out about the show then.

cheers, Tom

Did you find anything out Tom.

Yep, the showing on march 16th was only in America, its going to be aired in the UK on Channel 5 this Wed 14th at 8pm. Should be interesting!

so after seeing the show, what are peoples opinions?

There is no dout that self immunising builds up antibodies to the venoms that these peaple are injecting, but without proper medical research and papers being written to prove that there are benefits to health or other ailments then the argument will still carry on. Time will tell if Dr derk Budker comes up with any thing or this was just for the camera's, Tim Friede and Terry Phillips on venom centre have some very interesting discussions on the subject and I'm sure any real research results will be very welcome, me personally, I think Ill sit on the fence.

It seems to me there are 2 main trains of thought on this topic.....

The first one is people who inject venom in order to build up the resistance to the effects of venom should they get bitten, to me this provides many pitfalls. First of all the possibility of developing an alergy through overexposure to certain components of the venom thus defeating the point of "self immunising" in the first place. Secondly the risks associated with injecting a modified saliva, as Wolfgang stated in the documentary, with little or no regard for sterilisation strikes me as careless. Finally there are obvious risks associated with injecting venom when alone. I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't be handling/keeping an animal you aren't confident with, and therefore you shouldn't need to immunise against the possible risks.

The second idea of people injecting venom for the possible health benefits seems a much better idea to me in theory. For me personally however the same risks as above would still apply, however if there was scientific proof that a certain component of snake venom was beneficial and was available in nutraceutical/pharmacalogical form then I would cetainly have less reservations.

Whether we see the people who currently inject snake venom into their bodies as pioneers or mis-informed thrill seekers there can be no denying this is certainly an interesting topic with (of course) many conflicting viewpoints. It is certainly one I look forward to hearing more about in future as developments show whether snake venom can be used as a cure for certain diseases....

Matt