Posted on 11/09/2007 10:12:53 AM PST by EveningStar
Does location of the bite influence mortality? Seems like since it was in her face, the venom would get to critical organs much more quickly.
IIRC, you can build up a resistance to arsenic by taking small doses daily and slowly increasing the amount. I heard it from a friend but it seems to me that I heard it somewhere else, too.
It would be convenient to dupe people with.
God bless your nephew. I guess God’s got something big for him to do yet.
Actually, it is pretty rare to die from a rattlesnake bite. Envenomation does not occur in about 30% of the cases. I doubt there are more than 20 deaths/year.
The face probably isn’t a good location for a bite though. The venom is a neurotoxin, and it is impossible to tourniquet the area. I can’t tell from the article whether the hospital is negligent or not. There isn’t much they can do except start a saline line and wait for antivenom. Most of the stuff in the lawsuit sounds like it is written by someone who knows very little about EMS protocols, and is hoping to get lucky on something. It is hard to be sure, without more information.
As for all the freepers who think that because she did something stupid, the hospital isn’t liable, you are wrong. As a paramedic, I spent a majority of my time with victims/patients that have done something stupid. They deserve help and care as much as everyone else. We could all be there one day, and the stupidity is sometimes only recognized after the fact.
The hospital and EMS are used to this, and are expected to treat all patients the same. If they don’t they are liable. I suspect this lawsuit has more to do with making fun of the religion than it does with medical malpractice.
And the $64,000 question is “Did she lose her faith after being bitten and if she did does she now go to hell rather than heaven if she had died of old age?”
The above is a disclaimer from the NIV version at BibleGateway.
Snake chucker ping
Did the Lord get testy? :)
Exactly. And error of commission being more culpable than error of omission.
He was a colleague of mine when I was at Texas Tech - Prof. Dennis Covington. He is still teaching there.
This is a corollary of the Sigmund Freud doctrine that "Sometimes madame, a cigar is just a cigar".
You can, of course, safely handle snakes with the proper equipment ~ it's done all the time.
These people, however, think the Scriptures say you can dance with the snakes and play huggy-buggy with them.
They are wrong aren't they!
The crazy Siberian monk Rasputin seemed to have been that kind of guy. There's a bunch of 'em up there still.
I suspect the original core of snake-handlers had a larger than average number of folks who could handle the diluted poisons fairly well.
They might have even had a bunch who could talk to snakes (jus' like talking to a crow except snakes are stupider).
Today's snake-handlers have no obvious genetic advantage ~ I believe that's because all the descendants of the original culties moved North in the 1950s and got good jobs! They even take baths and such these days.
Ah, so it is. That's what I get for skimming in a hurry and then posting :)
I live up in this area, on the Tennessee/Kentucky border. And yes, there are still folks (not many) up here who handle snakes as part of their religious services (not me).
I know some of you freepers have seen my comments on the snake handlers in the past, but for those who haven’t, I must share this TRUE story:
Several years ago I edited a regional outdoor magazine, and received regular news releases from the state wildlife agency. One day I read a news release about some bear poachers being arrested by the wildlife agency. When WL officials went to one of the guy’s homes to inspect his freezer for bear parts, they found more than 100 poisonous snakes (copperheads and rattlers, and it is illegal to possess these live).
I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to keep these in the freezer (more than 100?), so called a friend at the agency and asked him. He told me the guy who had the snakes was a preacher at one of those snake handling churches. In addition to to ILLEGALLY poaching bears, he also was a phoney snake handler.
So, while his church members handled live snakes, this preacher brought his to the services frozen. Probably thawed them out first, though.
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