Posted by:
WW
at Thu Dec 11 11:37:40 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by WW ]
>>Has there be much research about the volume of venom snakes carry. Has anyone determined the "full load" of various hots. I have a southern copperhead and its LD50 is 25.6 mg/kg. Doing the math would require 1792 mg of its venom to kill me. What's the volume of an average bite? and then what's its full capacity?
That figure applies to lab mice. You are not a lab mouse. Different animals, of which we are one, can differ hugely in their susceptibility to many snake venoms, so you can't extrapolate from mouse LD50 data to how much it would take to kill a human. For that matter, even a different strain of lab mouse may show a distinctly different LD50, and if you collect a bunch of copperheads 20 miles away from the ones used to get the 25.6 mg/kg figure, then you may find them several times more or less lethal - and that's without even going into individual variation within a population, which can also raise or lower lethality severalfold.
Basically, LD50 figures are of use in some research, e.g., to test to what extent an antivenom neutralises a venom, but they don't mean %#@&* as far as assessing the danger to humans is concerned. Arguing about the decimal point in LD50 comparisons is thus the height of futility.
Cheers,
Wolfgang
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RE: Question to the experts about venom load. - WW, Thu Dec 11 11:37:40 2003