My snake venom and medicine paper

[EasternGirl]

Steve...I'm moving the link to a new thread. People might not check the old thread if they completed the survey. :)

My paper on snake venom and applications in medicine: https://www.box.com/s/5l4s03pt87n2sr9vkmyl

[guidofatherof5]

Sounds good.

[Greg'sGarters]

This reminds me about a cool thing I heard about chemotherapy. Before modern chemotherapy, what doctors would do is inject a cancer patient with poison, and hope that the poison would kill off the cancer cells before it killed the patient. This had a very low success rate.

[guidofatherof5]

I believe arsenic is still used to treat dog with heart worms.
Just enough to kill the worms but not the dog.
My old girl Ally (R.I.P) was treated as a pup.

[EasternGirl]

Well...they do have chemo now that is considered cancer cell or tumor specific. For certain types of cancer they have drugs that target the cancerous cells without harming the healthy cells which leads to less side effects from the chemo. I know they use it for one type of leukemia. The use of venom is different in the sense that the amount they have found that works to kill cancer cells is not enough toxin to cause a person to become systemically ill. So as in the example you gave, Greg, with venom, you would not be poisoning or envenomating the patient, so to speak. Not to any degree that would cause a toxic reaction.