Wheel of Topics #6

They create pharmaceutical drug from almost anything today. Well it's not new, they make peniciline with mold afterall. But can you imagine a heart medication made from snake venom or modified explosives. Well, it's true. They extracted a very powerfull anticoagulant from from the venom of a south american snake(I don't remember wich one). Well, it can be used for more than hearth treatement, but it is its main use.

For the explosive, ever heard of someone using nitro for his heart. Well it is nitroglycerine, a potent and highly unstable explosive. It is used as a vasodilatator to help the oxygene flow in the heart muscle. Since it is unstable it must modified before use.

Lately they even found a chemical that could be use to control epilepsy in scorpion venom(here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesobuthus_martensii, near the end). I'm pretty sure there are other weird example around the net, so maybe I'll come back with some new thing in the futur.

Grim the pirate