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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] venom

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  • From: david.maxwell@dal.ca
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] venom
  • Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:26:24 -0300

A most interesting thread, (albeit rather unrelated to fruit growing). May I
throw in a couple of
bits of science from my medical background? 1) The venoms in all marine
organisms are
heat labile, but specifically at temperatures considerably lower than those
needed to denature
human tissue proteins. The practical significance of this is that if you get
stung by a jellyfish,
or one of the fish with stinging spines you can successfully inactivate the
venom simply with
hot water, (and indeed this is the most appropriate therapy - hot
compresses). I have no idea
whether the same thing applies to snake venoms, but rather doubt it, given
that snakes are
biting warm-blooded creatures, and if the venom were inactivated at
relatively low
temperatures, (such as only a little above body heat), it would not work very
well for the
snake's purposes. 2) On the other side of this coin, there is a gadget
(available on the
internet as well as in some retail outlets (Lee Valley)), called a
"Therapik", designed to treat
insect bites by applying local heat to the bite. Apparently the heat is
sufficient to inactivate
the "venom" of mosqitoes and black flies, but not enough to damage human
proteins. I can
attest to its efficacy, and actually performed (unblinded) experiments on
myself to prove that
it worked. So there are models for denaturation of specific proteins by
factors which spare
body proteins. But whether this would apply to electric currents I have not
the slightest idea.




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