Rock Singer Has Been Injecting Himself With Snake Venom for 25 Years

For 25 years, Steve Ludwin has self-administered weekly injections of venom from some of the world’s most venomous snakes.

He initially used extremely low doses, diluted with water. Since then, he gradually increased the dose and expanded his repertoire to more than 35 snake species.

He believes that the injections boost his immune system and keep him young. There is no scientific evidence that this is the case, just as there is no doubt that Steve has embarked on a potentially life-threatening hobby. But it does present scientists with a unique opportunity.

A research team from the University of Copenhagen has recently completed an artificial library of antibodies, comprised of copies of antibodies generated by Ludwin’s immune system in response to injections with snake venom.

The library is now used to screen for antibodies that can neutralise individual toxins in venom. Some of these could be used to develop antivenoms to treat snake bites.

“There’s a higher chance of mining effective antibodies from such a person than there would be from someone who had never been bitten. His immune system really is a goldmine,” says Simon Glerup from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is not involved in the project.

Is it worth the risk? There are of course a number of antivenoms already in existence for a range of snake bites. But snake bites are still a major problem in many developing countires. They kill around 150,000 people a year worldwide and leave 400,000 requiring amputation. Existing antivenom medicines were just recently added to WHO’s list of essential medicines.

To develop antivenom, the snake is milked for its venom, which is then injected into animals, usually horses. They produce antibodies to work against the toxins in the snake venom.

The antibodies mature inside the horse and are then extracted and purified before they can be injected into people. This process saves lives, but unfortunately it is not always doable and some people can suffer unwanted side effects from antibodies developed in animals, such as serum sickness—similar to an allergic reaction.

“You could develop allergies afterwards and there are some examples of people dying from anaphylactic shock. So then the question is: do you want to run this risk or just die with certainty,” says Brian Lohse, an associate professor in chemistry and molecular biology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and leader of the research project, the Anti-venom Venture.

Read More: Snakebites still exact a high toll in Africa. A shortage of antivenoms is to blame

Brian Lohse from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, handles a venomous snake. Lohse leads the research team that recently completed an artificial library of antibodies. These could one day lead to new antidotes to treat snake bites. (Photo: Private photo) One way around this is to produce synthetic antivenoms, which a number of research groups around the world are currently trying to do.

In Lohse’s lab at the University of Copenhagen, they are experimenting with adding DNA into biological systems, such as virus particles. This forces the particles to produce antibodies. They then isolate the antibodies, which bind to specific toxins in the venom from which they can generate synthetic antivenoms.

This removes the need for horses and produces a safer, more more effective, and clean product.

“Before we used random peptide- and antibody libraries, but by working with Steve we got access to a unique opportunity, because through him (or his DNA/RNA) we have the possibility to obtain human antibodies specifically targeting the snake toxins that Steve has used, and displaying them directly onto the surface of the virus particles. We simply copy his antibody portfolio over and into the phage display library,” says Lohse.

Now they need to isolate the most relevant antibodies from all of the samples in the library.

“With Steve’s help we now have a unique, tailor-made library, that potentially contains neutralising human antibodies against snake toxins, which could eventually be used to treat snakebite victims” says Lohse.

Two years to develop the library Lohse and his research group first came across Ludwin’s activities via a YouTube video produced by VICE, detailing how and why he injected the snake venom each week. It was a unique opportunity to access human DNA, which would not otherwise have been approved by a scientific ethics committee.

After making contact, they flew Ludwin to Copenhagen and took blood samples. But these samples did not contain enough B-cells, which make the antibodies. Physician Pal Szesci from University Hospital Copenhagen and the Anti-Venom Venture project, proposed another strategy, extracting Steve’s bone marrow.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to isolate B-cells from his blood samples, Ludwin agreed to having his bone marrow extracted for analysis—a painful procedure.

“Steve had to think about it for a couple of days, but Steve’s a tough nail, and said yes. That was what it took to finally get over the hurdle. We were finally able to extract enough of the B-cells and isolate his DNA and RNA,” says Lohse.

These new treatments will avoid the severe side effects of current antivenoms derived from animals.

Within the project Lohse and colleagues are collecting venom from snakes at wildlife centres in Denmark and Sweden, including:

The Blue Planet Aquarium, Denmark Terrariet Reptile Zoo, Denmark Tropikariet Indoor Zoo, Sweden Randers Regnskov Tropical Zoo, Denmark Sources: Brian Lohse and the Anti-venom project.

First task is to neutralise deadly toxins The scientists have now secured some initial funding to start screening the library for binding antibodies, which can be used in the fight against snake venom.

The first step is to search for the specific antibodies, which fought off the most venomous toxin proteins that Ludwin injected into his body, says Lohse.

“Our approach is to go for and block the toxins that are lethal within a very short period. For example, neurotoxins that paralyses you and prevents you from breathing, which leads to death. There are also other nasty side effects such as breaking down muscle tissues, cells, and bloodcells, which we look at as well. but the top priority is to prevent people from dying immediately [after the bite]—the follow-up treatments for the many side effects will follow, in the aftermath,” he says.

They have already copied the parts of Ludwin’s DNA that code for his antibodies inside the viruses that combine with a given toxin. This gives them a recipe for the effective antibodies, which can then be reproduced synthetically.

In the future they hope to develop the antibodies inside animal cells, which would allow Lohse and colleagues to develop the specific, neutralising antibodies into an antidote—a pharmaceutical that can be used for treatment in a process that can be done on an industrial scale.

But as valuable a resource as Ludwin’s antibodies are, Lohse does not want to give the impression of supporting Ludwin’s self-immunisation project or to encourage others to follow Ludwin’s life threatening example.

“The fact that he does this and has survived so long is almost a miracle. You might not only get liver and bone damage, you could die. The University of Copenhagen absolutely does not encourage anyone to do what Steve has done. It is important for us to point out that Steve started this long before we came into the picture, and hence we could not have encouraged Steve to do what he does,” he says.

Teddy Roosevelt wrote extensively on poisonous snakes and their characteristics in his book on his travels in the amazon.

Excerpt from “Through the Brazilian Wilderness, by Theodore Roosevelt

“Before I followed them I witnessed an incident worthy of note from the standpoint of a naturalist, and of possible importance to us because of the trip we were about to take. South America, even more than Australia and Africa, and almost as much as India, is a country of poisonous snakes. As in India, although not to the same degree, these snakes are responsible for a very serious mortality among human beings.

One of the most interesting evidences of the modern advance in Brazil is the establishment near Sao Paulo of an institution especially for the study of these poisonous snakes, so as to secure antidotes to the poison and to develop enemies to the snakes themselves. We wished to take into the interior with us some bottles of the anti-venom serum, for on such an expedition there is always a certain danger from snakes. On one of his trips Cherrie had lost a native follower by snake-bite. The man was bitten while out alone in the forest, and, although he reached camp, the poison was already working in him, so that he could give no intelligible account of what had occurred, and he died in a short time.

Poisonous snakes are of several different families, but the most poisonous ones, those which are dangerous to man, belong to the two great families of the colubrine snakes and the vipers. Most of the colubrine snakes are entirely harmless, and are the common snakes that we meet everywhere.

But some of them, the cobras for instance, develop into what are on the whole perhaps the most formidable of all snakes. The only poisonous colubrine snakes in the New World are the ring- snakes, the coral-snakes of the genus elaps, which are found from the extreme southern United States southward to the Argentine. These coral-snakes are not vicious and have small teeth which cannot penetrate even ordinary clothing. They are only dangerous if actually trodden on by some one with bare feet or if seized in the hand. There are harmless snakes very like them in color which are sometimes kept as pets; but it behooves every man who keeps such a pet or who handles such a snake to be very sure as to the genus to which it belongs.

The great bulk of the poisonous snakes of America, including all the really dangerous ones, belong to a division of the widely spread family of vipers which is known as the pit-vipers. In South America these include two distinct subfamilies or genera—whether they are called families, subfamilies, or genera would depend, I suppose, largely upon the varying personal views of the individual describer on the subject of herpetological nomenclature. One genus includes the rattlesnakes, of which the big Brazilian species is as dangerous as those of the southern United States. But the large majority of the species and individuals of dangerous snakes in tropical America are included in the genus lachecis. These are active, vicious, aggressive snakes without rattles.

They are exceedingly poisonous. Some of them grow to a very large size, being indeed among the largest poisonous snakes in the world—their only rivals in this respect being the diamond rattlesnake of Florida, one of the African mambas, and the Indian hamadryad, or snake-eating cobra. The fer-de-lance, so dreaded in Martinique, and the equally dangerous bushmaster of Guiana are included in this genus. A dozen species are known in Brazil, the biggest one being identical with the Guiana bushmaster, and the most common one, the jararaca, being identical, or practically identical with the fer-de-lance. The snakes of this genus, like the rattlesnakes and the Old World vipers and puff-adders, possess long poison-fangs which strike through clothes or any other human garment except stout leather.

Moreover, they are very aggressive, more so than any other snakes in the world, except possibly some of the cobras. As, in addition, they are numerous, they are a source of really frightful danger to scantily clad men who work in the fields and forests, or who for any reason are abroad at night.

The poison of venomous serpents is not in the least uniform in its quality. On the contrary, the natural forces—to use a term which is vague, but which is as exact as our present-day knowledge permits— that have developed in so many different families of snakes these poisoned fangs have worked in two or three totally different fashions. Unlike the vipers, the colubrine poisonous snakes have small fangs, and their poison, though on the whole even more deadly, has entirely different effects, and owes its deadliness to entirely different qualities. Even within the same family there are wide differences.

In the jararaca an extraordinary quantity of yellow venom is spurted from the long poison-fangs. This poison is secreted in large glands which, among vipers, give the head its peculiar ace-of-spades shape. The rattlesnake yields a much smaller quantity of white venom, but, quantity for quantity, this white venom is more deadly. It is the great quantity of venom injected by the long fangs of the jararaca, the bushmaster, and their fellows that renders their bite so generally fatal. Moreover, even between these two allied genera of pit-vipers, the differences in the action of the poison are sufficiently marked to be easily recognizable, and to render the most effective anti-venomous serum for each slightly different from the other. However, they are near enough alike to make this difference, in practice, of comparatively small consequence. In practice the same serum can be used to neutralize the effect of either, and, as will be seen later on, the snake that is immune to one kind of venom is also immune to the other.

But the effect of the venom of the poisonous colubrine snakes is totally different from, although to the full as deadly as, the effect of the poison of the rattlesnake or jararaca. The serum that is an antidote as regards the colubrines. The animal that is immune to the bite of one may not be immune to the bite of the other. The bite of a cobra or other colubrine poisonous snake is more painful in its immediate effects than is the bite of one of the big vipers. The victim suffers more.

There is a greater effect on the nerve-centres, but less swelling of the wound itself, and, whereas the blood of the rattlesnake’s victim coagulates, the blood of the victim of an elapine snake—that is, of one of the only poisonous American colubrines— becomes watery and incapable of coagulation.

Snakes are highly specialized in every way, including their prey. Some live exclusively on warm-blooded animals, on mammals, or birds. Some live exclusively on batrachians, others only on lizards, a few only on insects.

A very few species live exclusively on other snakes. These include one very formidable venomous snake, the Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, and several non-poisonous snakes. In Africa I killed a small cobra which contained within it a snake but a few inches shorter than itself; but, as far as I could find out, snakes were not the habitual diet of the African cobras.

The poisonous snakes use their venom to kill their victims, and also to kill any possible foe which they think menaces them. Some of them are good-tempered, and only fight if injured or seriously alarmed. Others are excessively irritable, and on rare occasions will even attack of their own accord when entirely unprovoked and unthreatened.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.