Wisconsin Man's 200 Snake Bites May Save Millions

Tim Friede nearly died multiple times so that millions of others might live. The 58-year-old Wisconsin window cleaner spent two decades allowing the world's deadliest snakes to bite him, and his extraordinary sacrifice is about to pay off in a way that could save countless lives.

Friede let venomous snakes bite him more than 200 times in his basement, building up antibodies that a California company called Centivax is now developing into a near-universal antivenom. His quest almost killed him, put him in a coma, and nearly cost him his leg and fingers, but he never gave up.

"I understood it was dangerous but people are dying from snakebites and I was pissed at that," Friede told the Guardian. "I put my ass on the line and I'm glad I did."

The stakes are enormous. Snakebites kill 138,000 people and cause 400,000 disfigurements and disabilities worldwide each year, mostly among poor communities in Asia and Africa. As climate change pushes snakes and humans into closer contact, those numbers are climbing.

The game changer is that Friede's antibodies work against 19 different snake species in the elapid family, which includes cobras, mambas, and coral snakes. Current antivenoms only work for specific species, making treatment complicated and expensive.

Friede started his basement experiment in 2001 with no scientific training, just a burning desire to help. He injected himself with small mixtures of venom and saline before allowing bites, usually to his forearm or fingers. He kept about 60 snakes shipped from a Florida breeder.

His first major crisis came on September 12, 2001, when he let a monocled cobra and an Egyptian cobra bite him within the same hour. He collapsed into a coma for several days and would have died without his neighbor calling 911.

"I know what it's like to be almost dead," he said. "It's cold and dark, you can't talk, my body just froze up."

But Friede went right back to his work. Over the years, he passed out from anaphylactic shock multiple times. One finger turned black after a rattlesnake bite and nearly needed amputation. A monocled cobra's venom caused muscles in his leg to burst through his skin, forcing him to cut them out with a razor blade.

Why This Inspires

Friede could have stopped after the coma. He could have listened to the people calling him crazy or his then-wife's reservations. Instead, he thought about the "brokest people on the planet" dying from snakebites and kept going.

His collaboration with Centivax means those years of pain weren't in vain. A trial of the antivenom will begin on pets in Australia this year before any human use. Chief executive Jacob Glanville calls Friede's achievement remarkable, noting he was "assailed by the venom of very lethal snakes that would normally kill a horse."

Friede worked as a window cleaner by day while becoming an amateur scientist by night, solving what he called "a puzzle on how to not die from snakebites." His determination came from a simple place: fairness.

"I wanted to do it for humanity, for people who are the brokest people on the planet," he said. Now, thanks to one man's willingness to endure unimaginable pain, millions of people facing one of nature's deadliest threats may soon have access to life-saving treatment.