00:01 TIM FRIEDE: I will not stop doing this until
the vaccine is in the field, or I die.
00:15 COMM: Over the last 16 years without a real
lab or funding Tim Friede has set himself the mission of developing a vaccine against
some of the world’s deadliest venomous snakes, using himself as a human guinea pig.
00:30 TIM FRIEDE: Black Mamba.
You can never ever have a bad day, and that’s why my focus is so strong and so intense.
Because if you do have a bad day, do your math wrong, your injections are off; you get
bit - you are done, that’s it.
00:45 TIM FRIEDE: Two bites.
Nice.
00:48 COMM: It’s an obsession that has cost him
his marriage and could cost him his life.
00:53 BETH FRIEDE: Me and the kids never came in
first, sometimes not even second.
00:56 TIM FRIEDE: Everything has taken a back seat
to it.
I wish I was not selfish with it.
01:01 TIM FRIEDE: Thanks for watching.
01:05 COMM: Today Tim plans to take consecutive
bites from 2 deadly venomous snakes to prove the strength of his immune system.
01:14 TIM FRIEDE: You have not put me under any
problems.
Everything I am doing is on my own.
I am signing off on it.
If I die, bury me.
Piece of cake.
01:27 TIM FRIEDE: Black Mamba.
01:38 TIM FRIEDE: PNG Taipan.
01:43 TIM FRIEDE: You can already see the swelling
and more blood than usual.
I love it.
Love it.
01:59 TIM FRIEDE: Arms are killing me right now.
I mean it’s a throbbing sensation.
It’s just boom, boom, boom, boom.
02:09 TIM FRIEDE: It has been 20 minutes since I
have taken a black mamba bite and a taipan bite back to back, and I feel great.
Minus the swelling which is extreme.
Right now I am the only person in the world that can do what you just saw.
I don’t think there’s anybody that’s gonna meet a black bite and taipan bite back
to back.
Let alone either one of them.
And I don’t say that arrogantly, I say it confidently.
02:36 COMM: At his home in Wisconsin, Tim has been
injecting himself with controlled doses of venom over the last 16 years to build up an
immunity to snake bites.
He hopes his experiments in self-immunisation will lead to the development of a vaccine.
And he has been sharing his results with a scientist who specialises in immunology.
02:56 TIM FRIEDE: My relationship is with Dr. Brain
Hanley.
I don’t have a degree so it’s nice to have someone that does to represent the cause
academia wise.
03:06 BRAIN HANLEY: I tend to like people who get
out and do something hard against the odds.
The more I found out, the more interesting he was.
Here’s a guy with a high school education, who self-taught himself some pretty sophisticated
immunology and microbiology.
03:19 TIM FRIEDE: It’s as simple as this, if you
are in Africa, whatever country you are in with let’s say mambas, and you take a controlled
dose of venom through time and dilute it down, and you work your way up to a certain amount
of venom to create a tighter level for antibodies, IGG.
You can walk out of your hut, get bit, go back to work and not die.
It’s as simple as that.
03:42 BRAIN HANLEY: A good scientist doesn’t argue
with empirical results.
Arguing with Tim’s results it’s like arguing with the sky being blue.
It needs work but it’s real, and it fits what we know about immunology.
There is no conflict there.
03:54 TIM FRIEDE: Dr. Hanley and I hope we can take
what I do and publish it and have other physicians, clinicians take it out to the world to self-immunise
other people in the world.
Anywhere in the world where people die from snake bites, that’s the number one goal.
04:07 BRAIN HANLEY: Doing without a lab or funding,
there are definitely limits to that.
Things like this, you know, you work on it, you work on it, you work on it, you work on
it, and then maybe the right people will see it, and it will catch fire, you never know.
I’d like to help him accomplish that.
04:24 COMM: But Tim’s experiments haven’t been
without great personal cost.
One injection of monocle cobra venom caused necrosis in his leg, and he had to self-amputate
the muscle.
And that’s not all.
04:38 TIM FRIEDE: I made a big mistake back in 2011
and took 2 cobra bites; took one fine, took another one, and flat lined ICUE.
Because it was so bad it’s really cool to be at this stage and beat that scary thing.
Big mistake, but sometimes when you make those mistakes you have to come back, and get through
them, and do this, which was the best thing that ever happened.
05:04 TIM FRIEDE: What’s up, buddy?
05:06 COMM: Perhaps the biggest cost has been the
breakup of his marriage, and the damage to his relationship with his family.
05:12 BETH FRIEDE: You ever feel like though you
pushed too hard?
05:14 TIM FRIEDE: Oh yeah.
I pushed hardly hard.
I pushed myself to death, literally.
05:19 BETH FRIEDE: You also pushed your family away.
05:21 TIM FRIEDE: I did.
But that’s 3 people versus millions, and millions, and millions, and millions.
05:26 BETH FRIEDE: I know you want to save lives,
and I understand that, and I know that’s your priority.
I always wished though that we came before the snakes.
05:35 TIM FRIEDE: I wish it did too.
05:36 COMM: Despite the risks and what it’s cost
him, Tim doesn’t plan on stopping.
05:42 TIM FRIEDE: Everything will be worth it if
we can develop a vaccine ‘cause people will be saved.
And that’s the reason I approve it and that’s the reason I do it.