$73,000 for a 1 night stay in hospital because of a snake bite

dtrader98 · Aug 12, 2009

FWIW if anyone ever gets bit by a brown recluse spider, in which case you can lose a large chunk of your flesh (I'd post a photo, but you might faint)...

I purchased this product (first AID kit),
best deal ever as it stopped the infection progression cold.
http://www.brown-recluse.com/index.html
keep one handy, best insurance against that type of bite you'll find for the cost
(29.95).

Marsupilami · Aug 12, 2009

Quote from Kassz007:

LOL.

In any other country you would have got the same treatment for a tiny fraction of the cost.
More...

In most western countries, treatment would have been fully covered by your insurance.

dcraig · Aug 12, 2009

Quote from Matt8200:

I have posted many reference read them all.

More case studies:
http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm
More...

It seems Vit C cures just about anything. Unfortunately it's all anecdotal. Where is any sort of statistical study ? You know, the sort of thing that medicine is based upon.

There has been some good research done in Australia on venoms, no doubt because our country is inhabited by so many extravagantly venomous creatures. No first aid or treatment protocol uses Vit C.

If you fancy being bitten by an Australian common brown snake for example and poping some vit pills, go right ahead. For my part, I'd apply a pressure bandage and get to the nearest hospital ASAP.

mkmps · Aug 12, 2009

my buddy was camping somewhere in the woods and got a bug in his ear, that he could not take out himself.

Went to some local ER, they looked at it, put some vegetable oil to kill it and told him to go to an ear doctor in the morning.

Sure enough the local doctor charged him like $300 to take it out. A week later he got a $4800 bill for 15 mins that he spent in ER. So he did not get treatment, but still got billed.

Thunderdog · Aug 12, 2009

Quote from dtrader98:

FWIW if anyone ever gets bit by a brown recluse spider, in which case you can lose a large chunk of your flesh (I'd post a photo, but you might faint)...

I purchased this product (first AID kit),
best deal ever as it stopped the infection progression cold.
http://www.brown-recluse.com/index.html
keep one handy, best insurance against that type of bite you'll find for the cost
(29.95).
More...

http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/brownrecluse.asp

ba1 · Aug 12, 2009

With ascorbate, those with enough technical background to run their own therapeutic trial, or, simply enough common sense to give it a try, seem to get very, very "lucky".

Those who aren't capable of recognizing opportunity at extremely low risk for the prospect of identified great benefits, I don't mind Darwin awards.

What I do mind, is footing the tax bill for stupid sheeple and ripoff medical nonservice at $X,000 a clip for simple DYI situations. Massive ascorbate orally ingested is such a solution for many problems.

For a snakebite I would be afraid that oral C couldn't fully neutralize the load as fast as desirable, but would not hesitate to use it to the max for all the benefit I could get, especially out hiking. Also see http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/199x/landwehr-r-j_orthomol_med-1991-v6-n2-p99.htm on early IM/IV treatments being studiously ignored.

Matt8200 · Aug 12, 2009

Quote from dcraig:

It seems Vit C cures just about anything. Unfortunately it's all anecdotal. Where is any sort of statistical study ? You know, the sort of thing that medicine is based upon.
More...

Reluctance by Orthodox Medicine to Accept

Dr. Klenner knew all this way back thirty to forty years ago. Why has the medical community taken so long to use this cheap, safe, and valuable tool to control infections? Dr. Irwin Stone, Dr. Linus Pauling, and Dr. Robert Cathcart have tried to popularize this method and were only met with poor press and ridicule. Are the drug manufacturers organized into a conspiracy too powerful to overcome? M.D. types will believe what is published in their favorite medical journals, but Vitamin C therapy studies are not seen in medical journals because much of the income to the publishers comes from drug manufacturers. Vitamin C use represents a threat to their income; it cannot be patented. Maybe if patients demanded the therapeutic use of Vitamin C from their doctors, the doctors would become familiar with its use and add it to their therapeutic tools. Their colleagues would hoot: âHa ha, you are a quack. You were suckered into that.â

The doctor could respond: âI didnât want to, but the patient made me do it.â

But the evidence for its use seems to be there, right in the medical literature, but how many read the Journal of Preventative Medicine?

Dr. Klenner writes clearly and cogently. He is cheerful, even enthusiastic. And I find no bitterness due to the frustrations about the poor acceptance of his research by the medical establishment. He had done his own literature search and finds plenty of confirmation for his therapies in animal and human experiments.

âMany physicians refuse to employ Vitamin C in the amounts suggested, simply because it is counter to their fixed ideas of what is reasonable.â The new products advertised by an alert drug company are okay to them. Dr. Klenner tells of many letters from doctors who used this C treatment on poliomyelitisâin patients, their own children and even themselves. They were cured.

Dr. Klenner commented that if these spectacular results had been produced at a teaching and research center and then published, the medical community might pay some attention and the use of C would become standard and routine. âThere is no doubt that physicians are being brainwashed with the current journal advertising.â He uses an appropriate quote from Herber Spencer, ââ¦ to keep a man in everlasting ignoranceâ¦ condemnation without investigation.â

He blamed the National Research Council who planted the concept in doctorsâ brains that any dose above 125 mg per day is spilled by way of the kidneys. It was like any drug, the council implied, and more was no more effective than the dinky dose that protected the human from scurvy. Doctors do not seem to realize that the need for C is different âin each one of us either because of the individual kidney threshold level or because of greater requirements necessitated by pathology.â
More...

http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm

Most people, including physicians, are not aware of the medical politics, legal machinations and economic sanctions that covertly control the practice of medicine in the United States. A physician who introduces an innovative and nontraditional type of therapy often becomes the target of those forces. That is especially true if a new therapy, like EDTA chelation: 1) involves a major shift in the scientific paradigm; 2) if acceptance of the new therapy somehow implies that currently used medical practices are inappropriate; or 3) if the new therapy threatens the financial well being of a politically powerful and well established branch of the medical profession. Quite the opposite occurred with the immediate and widespread acceptance of bypass surgery and balloon angioplasty, which quickly brought wealth and fame to surgeons, cardiologists, large teams of health care professionals, and the hospital industry.

As with EDTA chelation therapy, major pressures are brought to bear on the "deviant" physician to coerce him back into the accepted mold. He is ostracized by his peers; he comes under professional attack for "lack of ethics;" his medical and mental competence are questioned; he is accused of "exploiting" his patients for personal gain; and epithets of "quack" and "charlatan" are hurled his way. Ad hominum attacks are common, in the absence of more cogent and scientific criticisms.

Well known historical examples of that phenomenon occurred with the introduction of the germ theory of disease. That simple concept took 50 years for complete acceptance by the medical profession.

Lister was viciously attacked when he proposed that wound infections were not inevitable after surgery if aseptic techniques were used. Semmelweis was likewise dealt with when he urged doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies to prevent maternal deaths from puerperal sepsis. Lister's recommendations were not accepted by mainstream medicine for many decades, and Semmelwels was persecuted to his death by medical colleagues, who were incensed by the notion that they themselves transmitted disease from patient to patient on their unwashed hands. Has human nature changed since that time?

The history of medicine is replete with examples of medical "heretics" who were eventually credited with major advances. They were often not recognized for their achievements until after death. Paracelsus, for example, is exalted as one of the great pioneers in medicine, but he was the original "quack" in his own time. Paracelsus introduced the use of mercury to treat syphilis. There was no other cure for syphilis at the time, although, as with many treatments today, the lethal dose of mercury was close to the therapeutic dose. Paracelsus was viciously attacked by his medical peers and derisively called a "quack" (short for "quacksalber," the old German word for mercury).

Inertia in science and medicine is a powerful force and is reinforced by major economic and legal forces in the United States. Many industries and special interest groups that are politically and economically powerful would be hurt financially if chelation therapy were to become more widely accepted. Those same industries have a major influence in our society at all levels. Grants for university and medical school research often stem from those same sources. They spend heavily to lobby for laws, regulations and government funded medical research to favor their own interests and to suppress competition. It is difficult to obtain NIH research funds in the face of opposition from powerful lobbies when that research goes against those special interests.

Those same special interests have a major influence on lay and professional exposure through the news media. Advertising revenues are essential to the survival of medical journals, newspapers, magazines, television and radio. Even with freedom of the press, the media cannot survive without advertising revenues. There often exists an understandable reluctance to bite the hand that feeds them. It is difficult to educate the public and the medical profession about new developments without media cooperation. Medical schools also cannot afford to offend their corporate sources of research funds.

The welfare of the American public is often pushed aside by the industrial quest for profits and pressures to suppress competition. Every industry wants a monopoly, if that can be achieved. Mainstream medicine has come very close to that goal.

Scientific arrogance is commonplace. Physicians consider themselves to be experts in their own field. If a majority of physicians do not endorse a new therapy, they collectively rely on public recognition of their own "expertise" to discount a new concept that they themselves have not yet embraced. They forget that all great advances in medicine began with a small minority. Their thinking tends to follow along these lines: "If I'm the expert and I don't use this new therapy and if my many colleagues and peers are experts and they don't believe in the new therapy, then we must be right and that small group of physicians who believe differently must be wrong. We're the experts."

The most frequent criticism leveled by critics of non-traditional and alternative medical therapies is that new treatments are "unproven" because randomized, double-blind, controlled studies have not yet been done to prove effectiveness. Those criticisms ignore the fact that most medical procedures routinely performed in the practice of medicine are also unproven using those same criteria.

The Office of Technology Assessment, a branch of the United States Congress, with the help of an advisory board of eminent university faculty, has published a report with the conclusion that, " . . . only 10 to 20 percent of all procedures currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trial." Therefore, 80% to 90% of medical procedures routinely performed are unproven.(1) That report further points out that research which purports to prove effectiveness of the remaining 10% to 20% of medical procedures is largely flawed, and " . . many of the other procedures may not be efficacious." The most frequent reason for not accepting the value of EDTA chelation therapy reflects a flagrant double standard.
More...

http://www.drcranton.com/chelation/Slide_show/carter.htm
I am not necessarily endorsing chelation, just posting this paper because it does a great job describing the politics involved in medicine.

pspr · Aug 12, 2009

Quote from axehawk:

And to think that there are dumbass Americans standing & screaming at these "townhall meetings" that they don't want government-run health care. LOL.

If I get bit by a rattlesnake in Canada,
I doesn't cost me one cent.

More...

Ah ha ha ha ha. No, in Canada you die before you can get treatment saving the system tens of thousands of dollars.

dtrader98 · Aug 12, 2009

Quote from Thunderdog:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/brownrecluse.asp
More...

Thanks for the clarification, there's a bit more here...http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7468.html#MEDICAL

I'm not sure ALL cases of spider bites do not produce necrotic wounds.. "One reason for the great awareness of the recluse spiders throughout North America is that necrotic (rotting flesh) wounds are commonly misdiagnosed as 'brown recluse bites.' Although recluses can cause these types of wounds..."

I Mentioned directly from experience, as I had two gaping holes at approximate expected fang distance on my ankle which turned into big pus filled ulcers. After applying the 29.95 kit mentioned, they disappeared completely and quickly.
Whether it was the kit or an act of god, I'm sure you can see the bargain compared to what a hospital around here would charge.
-----------------------------------------
I also know of someone who used to feed friendly squirrels; well, they got bit by one, and let's just say the treatment (rabies vaccination) wasn't cheap by any means. Easy solution to that problem... Don't feed the d*&*$ animals.

Thunderdog · Aug 12, 2009

No argument there.