Venom and the cure

Venom is full of dualities. According to the UN’s World Health Organization, snakebite envenoming causes somewhere between 81,000 and 138,000 deaths per year, and even that is likely an undercount. Yet research into venom has yielded treatments for diabetes, cancer, erectile dysfunction, and even the celebrity favorite diabetes slash diet drug, Ozempic. 

In this episode, we explore the world of venom, where fear and fascination go hand-in-hand, and the potential for healing comes with deadly stakes. 

This is part II of our “Things That Can Kill You” miniseries, which also explores poison and allergies.

Featuring Sakthi Vaiyapuri. Thanks to Iva Tatić for her question.

Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

 

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LINKS

Here’s more on Sakthi Vaiyapuri’s community awareness programs in India and his team’s research on the socioeconomic impacts on rural populations in Tamil Nadu

The UN’s World Health Organization’s fact sheet on snake envenoming as a high-priority neglected tropical disease

A great breakdown on why snakebite deaths are undercounted and the problem of missing data, written by global health researcher Saloni Dattani on Substack

A Nature article on potential advances in antivenom

Check out this Science Friday film on the cool research on cone snails and the non-opoiod painkillers derived from their venom. 

More on Ozempic and lots of other innovations with roots in venom research (New York Times)