From the “Don't Try This at Home Department”: A researchers is attempting to develop an anti-venom antidote for the world's most poisonous snakes by inflicting bites on himself.

Discover reports that Tim Friede has been injecting himself with snake venom for more than 16 years in an attempt to build up a natural immunity to the most notorious snakes.
And according to a recent TV special from Barcroft USA, he’s been successful and is going to great lengths to demonstrate it.

“To prove his self-immunization theory works,” the narrator explains, “he recently took back-to-back bites from two of the world’s deadliest snakes.”

Friede say she has taken bites form a mojave rattlesnake, water cobras, a PNG taipan, black mamba, and western diamond back rattlesnake.

Friede’s self-immunization approach has many critics, including scientists, medical professionals, and venomous reptile experts who say that any potential benefits of his work are are far outweighed by the risks — which include allergy, infection, tissue damage, organ failure and, of course, death.

But Friede’s unorthodox approach has attracted the attention of a few medical professionals and scientists who think it might lead to better snakebite treatments.

Friede hopes his blood can be used to make a vaccine for snakebites, to prevent the tens of thousands of deaths that occur every year.

“I will not stop doing this until the vaccine is in the field or I die,” he says.