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A Florida man was bitten by a poisonous snake and treated with an expensive antivenom that cost more than $150,000. He was lucky: Venomous snakes kill 100,000 people every year. The Weather Channel’s Dave Malkoff met with members of a nonprofit hoping to lower the death toll by creating a cheaper treatment.
Anti venom is a prescription drug, like all prescriptions in the USA the prices are insane, regardless of illness/injury. As long as corporate greed controls the market dont except any $25 buck medication in the USA regardless of what they pay in India, or cheaper alternatives are developed.
A venomous snake bite will bankrupt you, as will a bad injury on your bicycle. No one seems to care based on the votes against the best interest of the voting majority.
The dude crying about the cost claims to have been bitten by a snake in habitat. Even though he keeps venomous snakes at home. He was messing with that wild rattler and was bitten likely trying to catch it. He doesn't say how he was bitten. If he had left it alone it certainly would have left him alone too.
I work daily in the southern swamps/wetlands for over 20 yrs. I've had hundreds of encounters with venomous snakes but only a couple close calls and not because I was messing with the snake. Accidents happen, being a dope is a choice.
These guys who keep dangerous snakes as pets should be required to post proof of proper insurance to cover a snake bite, like we have to prove auto insurance to own a car. Otherwise the cost they default on after getting bit will be passed on to every other user of health-care.
If you have $7,500 to buy a green mamba and another $8,000 to house, and feed it yearly you best have the bucks to pay for your snakebite if you live in Florida because you didn't get bit by a mamba hiking the everglades.
This is not an American problem since there are only 5-6 fatalities per year. Hornet, wasp, and bee stings cause ten times as many death, but even that is an infinitesimal number.
I cannot believe 100,000 people per year, even worldwide. Is there any backup for this claim?
Does anyone know the real number, in USA and in the world?
I previously posted a link in this thread to the University of Florida website which stated that 5-6 people die from the bites of venomous snakes in this country annually.
Here's an interesting story from the Telegraph that discusses world numbers. The Telegraph has a reputation for honesty and reliability.
When you consider how many billions of people live in the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, and how many of those people live in rural villages with minimal access to modern healthcare, that statistic of 90,00-100,000 fatalities yearly from snakebites is entirely believable. Unfortunately Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have many different venomous snake species, and a lot of them are aggressive as snakes go.
There is a LOT of misinformation in this thread. Antivenom are not like other prescription drugs and snake bites are nothing like bee stings. First in order to make antivenom, venom has to be taken from animals. This means someone must care for these dangerous animals, risk being bitten themselves to gather the venom, inject the venom into some other animal, sacrifice that animal to get the immunoglobulins it makes, purify them etc. This is far beyond the scope of what is done to manufacture other medicines.
So instead of costing penny's a dose, it would cost hundreds of dollars a dose just to manufacture. Meanwhile the FDA requires all the same level of drug trials, for a drug that will only be used a handful of times, and is much more likely to expire than be used. So every vial used must carry the cost of meeting all those requirements, and expired drugs in order for the manufacturer to continue to make enough of a profit to bother making it. No one currently make coral snake venom in the US because it is to expensive to make a profit. If someone is bitten now, they have to be put in a medically induced coma until the venom is out of their system naturally.
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