One Man’s Poison Is Another Man’s Cure

Free citizens take risks for better health.

8/23/2025|Updated: 8/23/2025

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Commentary

Tim Friede let venomous snakes bite him roughly 200 times, suffering anaphylactic shocks, and spending four days hospitalized in a coma. But this wasn’t a suicide attempt. He was seeking immunity to all snake venom, so that his blood could be used to create a universal antitoxin. The Centivax startup reports promising results from an early version of an antitoxin based on Friede’s blood.

Arthur Diamond

Author

Arthur Diamond earned graduate degrees in philosophy and in economics from the University of Chicago, where he also was awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with economics Nobel Prize laureate Gary Becker. He was on the faculty at The Ohio State University and is now Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO). He is the author of “Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism” from Oxford University Press and is working on “Less Costs, More Cures: Unbinding Medical Entrepreneurs.” He is a recipient of The Journal of Private Enterprise’s “Best Educational Note Award” and is a senior fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).