You Think You've Got a Rough Job ...

 ... here's a story about a guy who let venomous snakes bite him some 200 times to create a better snakebite antivenom.

In 2001, after working up to it for years, Tim Friede finally allowed himself to be bitten by a snake.

He started with venomous cobras because they're dangerous — and because they're what he had on hand at the time.

"My first couple bites were really crazy," he says. "It's like a bee sting times a thousand. I mean, you can have levels of anxiety that goes through the roof."

Friede has been fascinated with snakes for as long as he can remember. He used to hunt garter snakes growing up in Wisconsin.

As an adult, his obsession turned to venomous snakes — and the harm they cause people globally. He felt the most dramatic way to raise awareness of the issue was to allow himself to be bit, repeatedly.

He admits it's been "a rocky road," however. Right out of the gate, he says, "I was put in ICU after two cobra bites and I dropped in a coma for four days."

Friede recovered and with time, became more careful. To date, he estimates he's willingly been bit some 200 times by all manner of venomous snakes — black mambas, taipans, cobras, kraits and many others.

These snakes may be dangerous but he's often found them easier to understand than people. The relationship is clear. "They want to kill me," he says. "I want to survive."

Friede's motivation evolved to see if he could develop immunity to this swirl of toxins — so that his body might provide a roadmap to making a broad kind of antivenom.

Now, in a new paper in the journal Cell, researchers say they've done just that, thanks in large part to the antibodies that Friede has developed over nearly a quarter century of self-envenomation.

Every year, venomous snake bites kill tens of thousands of people globally and permanently disable several hundred thousand more, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). "So they might lose a limb, they might lose function in a limb, they might end up having to have huge surgeries, skin grafts, that kind of thing," says Stuart Ainsworth, a molecular biologist at the University of Liverpool who studies snake bites, antivenoms and the role that antibodies can play in helping create more powerful antidotes.

This is a particular problem in low- and middle-income countries and also countries in the tropics. These places "have huge snake bite burdens," says Ainsworth.

Specific health risks vary depending on the region of the world and the kinds of snakes found there. For example, in Papua New Guinea, most of the snakes produce neurotoxic venom. David Williams, a scientist who evaluates antivenoms for WHO, says the biggest risk to people who are bitten by these snakes is paralysis, "which can prevent them from being able to control their airway and breathing and they can potentially suffocate and die as a result of that."

Other venoms can affect the blood and cause it either to fail to clot or to form clots too readily, "which can lead to basically the patient stroking out or having a clot lodge in the vessels of the heart and cause a heart attack," says Williams. Some venoms cause intense pain while others cause no pain at all.

Such diversity in venom form and function is a big reason why the creation of a broad universal antivenom has been such a challenge.

Friede remembers Glanville saying to him: "You're the guy I'm looking for. We need your blood. We need your antibodies." And Friede accepted.

For Tim Friede, who's now the director of herpetology at Centivax, it's about helping the people impacted by venomous snakebites worldwide. When he heard that his antibodies had helped create this new antivenom cocktail, he says he was happy.

"I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it," he says. "I know I'm doing something for humanity and giving back to science."

Upon Glanville's recommendation, it has been several years since Friede last allowed himself to be bitten by a venomous snake. But he admits to missing it, mostly in terms of "just knowing where you can take your mind," he says.

"To know you can beat that and keep your calm and keep your cool, it's a wonderful thing."