LeslieBoyerMD
I'm a medical toxinologist, writing to make my field less scary and more understandable to people everywhere.
Protocols for Venom Emergencies
What do other people need to find in a hurry, if a reptile keeper is incapacitated by a snakebite?
What is in a “Protocol” for venomous snake emergencies?
(NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS FOR FUTURE PLANNING, NOT FOR EMERGENCY USE. IF YOU HAVE A SNAKEBITE RIGHT NOW, DO NOT WASTE TIME HERE! CALL YOUR POISON CENTER OR LOCAL EMERGENCY SERVICES / 911 SYSTEM.)
I'm a medical toxinologist. About once a month, somebody who works with . . .
Liquid Gold Rush
Seven considerations for people hoping to cash in on snake venom
I’m a doctor, specializing in Toxinology. I study the effects of venom.
Every year or so, something happens that raises public interest in venomous snakes: a scary story is circulated, or a show presents an overly-dramatic notion of venom as “liquid gold,” or an expensive hospital bill for antivenom goes viral. On these occasions I . . .
The Venom Interviews comes to life
Follow-up to Part 2 of Thinking Outside the Quotes
Not long ago I posted a 2-part story, titled Thinking Outside the Quotes, about being the expert featured in a media article. Sharing one's work with reporters is a heady experience, for sure: the media can magnify an important message in a way that is inaccessible to a lone academician. Wide exposure for a project one has worked on for . . .
Old men, women, and snakes
A father-daughter physician team considers our differences
My dad is retired now; but John T. Boyer, MD was a practicing and very well regarded geriatrician when I first showed him the analysis in my previous “Men, Women and Snakes” posts. In the “Age and Sex of Snakebitten People” graph, the greatest difference between the sexes happened between 15 and 44 years of age; and after age 60 both sexes . . .
Men, Women, and Snakes
Who gets bitten on the hand or on the foot?
Do rattlesnake bites affect men and women the same way?
In a previous article, I described a study of rattlesnake bites in Arizona, which showed some differences between men and women. Men were bitten more often than women, and at a younger age. Today, I’ll break down the same study’s data by month of the year, to illustrate a . . .
Men, Women, and Snakes
Is it true that most rattlesnake bites involve young men?
Is it true that most of the time, rattlesnake bites involve young men?
To learn the answer, at least for my home state of Arizona, colleagues and I sampled three years’ worth of records from the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, by pulling out the record of every third case of rattlesnake bite. That process resulted in . . .
Antivenom, antivenene, antivenin, Anti-Venom
Medical words in the public domain
What is the proper word for the antidote for snakebite or scorpion sting, made from the blood of animals that have been immunized with venom? Toxicologists and reptile enthusiasts correct each other all the time, on social media. But is one term really more proper than the other?
Let’s start with the inventors of the original . . .
