Talk:Horned adder

Venom

How venomous is the Bitis caudalis? Jeremy Bright 04:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

See new section in article. I hope that answers your question. --Jwinius 13:05, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you. Jeremy Bright 18:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

YouTube links

This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed or you would like to help spread this message contact us on this page. Thanks, ---J.S (t|c) 05:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

There are Antivenins

In "Süddeutsche Zeitung TV" a German TV Report sended on VOX, they said there is an antivenin for the venom of this snake. A reptile expert from a german Zoo said this when showing that snake. And that snake in a german zoo is proof that there's an effective antivenin, because if there's non, then it would be illegal to have that snake in the zoo. Law says that its only allowed to open the vivarium of a snake, if the zoo actually has an effective antivenin in stock. --85.180.253.184 01:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Although your reasoning may be a little off, it inspired me to look around some more. A quick search revealed that a polyvalent antivevin does indeed exist that includes protection this species. The information in the article has been modified accordingly. --Jwinius 12:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

After discussing the matter with a medical expert, I've come to the conclusion that the original statements were not so far off the mark after all. That's because there still don't seem to be any antivenins with antibodies that counteract the venom of this species specifically. As is stated on the MAVIN page, the Saudi Arabian product includes specific antibodies for some species, but paraspecific antibodies for the others, including B. caudalis. My understanding now is that paraspecific antibodies are those that were developed to counteract the effects of one venom specifically, but that happen to be effective to some degree against the effects of one or more other venoms.

As for German law, the question is: how effective does an antivenom have to be? Antivenin being what it is, this can be difficult to measure. Can paraspecific antibodies be considered effective according to the letter of the law? On the one hand, there are the pharmaceutical companies -- the antivenin manufacturers -- who claim that their product, with its paraspecific antibodies, is effective against bites from this species. On the other, there are scientists with medical reports that show that the available antivenins are not (always) that effective against bites from this species. The zoo? Well, if they want to include this species in their display, I suppose they'll simply cite the claims of the antivenin manufacturers. --Jwinius 18:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)