Fruit bat foreplay and electric anti-venom

RecSciPod S01E01 full transcript

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
1:55 Host introductions; Dave Talk
7:08 Bat fellatio study
17:13 Electric shock study
28:57 What did you learn today, outro

Intro

Lu: I’m just going to do the intro. I’m going to say my name and then you you’re going to say your name, okay?

Tirth: Okay.

Lu: That sound good?

Tirth: Yeah.

Lu: Okay. Welcome everybody to recreational science. The podcast where we explore creativity in science by examining the funniest, wackiest and most provocative scientific studies ever done. I’m Lu.

Tirth: I’m Tirth.

Lu: There’s like a five second pause.

Tirth: I thought you were going to say your whole name.

Lu: What the hell, man?

Tirth: Should we do it again?

Lu: No, it’s fine. It’s fine. We’re going to keep it going.

Tirth: Okay.

Lu: Keep it going. All right.

Tirth: Keep it going.

Lu: Oh actually I’m going to say, I’m Lu.

Tirth: I’m Tirth.

Lu: Okay. Join us, um, as we explore the boundless possibilities of scientific innovation. What’d you think of that intro?

Tirth: I love it.

Lu: It’s pretty good, right?

Tirth: I like the boundless.

Lu: Boundless.

Tirth: Boundless, big word.

Lu: Boundless…what did I say? Boundless possibility?

Tirth: Yeah.

Lu: Top of the dome.

Tirth: Big…

Lu: That was not scripted.

Tirth: Big word, big SAT word right there.

Host introductions; Dave Talk

Lu: Yeah. Well, Tirth, happy New Year, by the way.

Tirth: Happy New Year, buddy.

Lu: Yeah, haven’t seen you since the New Year started.

Tirth: That’s right.

Lu: Even though it’s March.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: When’s the deadline for when you can no longer wish someone a happy New Year?

Tirth: You know, Larry David explored this very question in a memorable episode of Curb.

Lu: He did? Interesting. What’s his opinion?

Tirth: I forgot the exact cutoff, but I think it was somewhere in January.

Lu: Interesting.

Tirth: Within 10 days.

Lu: I know Larry David pretty well. I’ve followed his career for a long time.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: He does not seem like the kind of person who have an opinion on this uh on something this trivial.

Tirth: Is that right?

Lu: Yeah, yeah. Anyways, moving on. Tirth, given that this is the first episode of Recreational Science, I thought we should introduce ourselves.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: to the audience.

Tirth: You go first. You go first.

Lu: This is just to give people an idea of who we are, why we’re qualified or unqualified to discuss science, right?

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: So actually Tirth, you and I are both physician scientists. We did our MD/PhD together at WashU in St. Louis. Good times. What was your favorite thing about St. Louis?

Tirth: Ted Drewes Frozen Custard.

Lu: Ah, very good. I like Imo’s. Yeah. Very good pizza. Never been, actually. But Ted Drewes is good. Yeah, so we both did our MD/PhD at WashU. One of my favorite things about our time at WashU is both of our thesis advisors, PhD thesis advisors are named Dave.

Tirth: That’s right.

Lu: Yeah. How’s your Dave doing?

Tirth: It’s a tale of two Daves.

Lu: Yeah. How’s your Dave doing, by the way?

Tirth: My Dave’s doing well.

Lu: Yeah?

Tirth: Yeah.

Lu: Good, good.

Tirth: Chugging along working on T-cells and Alzheimer’s disease now.

Lu: Interesting. My Dave’s doing all right too. He’s uh, staying healthy, staying fit, staying active, living a good life.

Tirth: When was the last time you talked to him?

Lu: Talked?

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: When I graduated. I mean, we’ve emailed back and forth here and there, but not talk in person or…

Tirth: Okay, fine. When was the last time you emailed him?

Lu: I don’t know, a few months ago, maybe.

Tirth: Okay. What do you email him about? Do you send him like funny jokes, funny tweets? Onion stories?

Lu: Oh yeah, a lot of a lot of email forwards. Uh…forward this to 50 people or your house is gonna get…

Tirth: Or you’ll lose your house.

Lu: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tirth: Your house will get broken into..

Lu: Yes. All right, well, uh, this is Dave Talk, a recurring segment on the show. Listeners, if you want more Dave Talk, stay tuned for…

Tirth: I bet this will be a big hit with the listener.

Lu: future episodes. Yeah, Dave Talk. What were we doing? Oh, introducing ourselves. Um, so yeah, so I’m Lu Yang. I am a pathologist and scientist at Stanford. My background is mainly in genetics, developmental biology, but now I’m currently working on cancer cell biology. What about you, Tirth?

Tirth: Well, I’m at UCLA. I’m a neurologist. Um, my scientific background is in Alzheimer’s disease. So, neuroscience, specifically looking at Tau protein and uh, biomarkers, things of that sort.

Lu: Mhm. You study something that you’re actually afflicted by. Which is uh…

Tirth: Hey…there’s no…there’s no stronger motivation than that, you know.

Lu: Yeah. No, which is which is fantastic. It’s a great story.

Tirth: Yeah. Yeah, the clock’s ticking, you know.

Lu: Yeah.

Tirth: Yeah. Pretty soon I won’t be able to draw a clock.

Lu: Ah, yeah, yeah. The MoCA.

Tirth: The MoCA.

Lu: Hey, you know how on the MoCA, there’s a rhinoceros?

Tirth: Uh, one of the versions of the MoCA I think has one, yes.

Lu: has a rhinoceros. So, so the MoCA, which stands for Montreal cognitive assessment, is a test that we use in medicine to assess uh cognitive ability of patients, mainly patients with dementia. And it has a lot of questions on it, like pictures of animals for patients to identify, or other cognitive puzzles, uh word memorization, things like that.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: When I was in med school and I used to, you know, give out the MoCA, a lot of the patients would say hippopotamus when I point to the rhinoceros. I would give him half points. Half credit. Did you used to do that?

Tirth: I just give them a full point, man.

Lu: No, no, half point for hippopotamus. It’s close enough. It’s a, it’s a reasonable mistake.

Tirth: The more interesting one though is one of the versions of the MoCA has um, has a crocodile or an alligator. I’m actually not too sure myself even though I give these out all the time in clinic now. And sometimes you’ll see patients.

Lu: And the patients…?

Tirth: Yes, the patients will actually stumble over them. They’ll say, “Hmm, I think this is an alligator. No, wait a minute, the snout is this long. I think this is a crocodile.” I’m like, listen, man. I would have given you a point for either one.

Lu: No, you should give him bonus points if they uh, get it exactly right.

Tirth: Yeah. Oh…

Lu: Oh, good times. Haven’t done one of those in five years.

Tirth: Do you know there’s an impossible MoCA by the way? Maybe we can bring it up on this pod one of these days.

Lu: Oh, yeah, yeah, we should.

Tirth: Yeah.

Lu: It’s what? What is it made for? Who is it made for?

Tirth: Um, probably for AI, when AI achieves uh, super intelligence.

Lu: It’s the Turing test. If you do too well on it, you’re not human.

Tirth: That’s right. Yes, it’s a new benchmark. There’s like a dozen different benchmarks for AI these days. Maybe this can be another one.

Lu: Interesting. Yeah, we should do that on the pod. That would be fun. We’ll uh, administer it to each other.

Tirth: All right.

Lu: And make a wager on who’ll do better.

Tirth: You lose.

Lu: All right, uh, well, Tirth, should we get to the science? What do you think?

Tirth: Let’s get to it. Let’s get to the meat.

Lu: All right. Um, want me to go first?

Tirth: Yes, it’s your show, my friend.

Lu: By the way, listeners, the way this podcast is going to work is that each episode, Tirth and I are going to present to each other like the weirdest, wackiest, funniest, stupidest uh, scientific study we find. So, today I’m going first.

Tirth: Can’t wait.

Bat fellatio study

Lu: Now Tirth, this paper I picked specifically for you because you’re going to love it.

Tirth: I’m hyped.

Lu: You’re going to, you’re going to love it. Okay, you ready?

Tirth: I’m hyped, as the kids say. Yes.

Lu: This study was published in 2009.

Tirth: Uh-huh.

Lu: It’s an oldie but a goodie.

Tirth: Uh-huh.

Lu: In PLoS ONE, one of the greatest journals ever, in my opinion.

Tirth: One of your favorite journals, if I recall.

Lu: Yeah, yes, for sure. You ready for the title?

Tirth: Yeah, go ahead.

Lu: Title is… Fellatio…by fruit bats…prolongs copulation time.

Tirth: Okay.

Lu: Let’s break that down, all right? Let’s break that down.

Tirth: Yeah, let’s go. Word by word.

Lu: The title of this paper is not “Fruit bats engage in fellatio.”

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: But that fellatio increases copulation time.

Tirth: I have so many questions.

Lu: Uh yeah, well let me give you the introduction and then you can jump in with your questions, okay?

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: So, Tirth, you might not know this, but fellatio is often used in human foreplay. Okay? You know that? You probably didn’t. That’s okay.

Tirth: No, news to me.

Lu: But it’s rarely been recorded in non-human animals. So this group from China decided to examine whether fellatio occurs in fruit bats. The species, specific species of fruit bats are the short-nosed fruit bats. The Latin name is Cynopterus sphinx. And not much is known about their sexual behavior because they are nocturnal and it’s very hard to observe such matters in the dark.

Tirth: Indeed.

Lu: Which makes sense. Yeah, feel free to jump in with the questions. Um, but going to going to the method. This study was…

Tirth: I guess my first question is, do they have sex hanging upside down?

Lu: Mmmm.

Tirth: How does that work?

Lu: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yes, they do hang upside down and uh, and yes, Tirth, I know what you’re thinking. There are videos…

Tirth: There are?

Lu: …available, included with the study.

Tirth: Can you send me the links?

Lu: Of course.

Tirth: For science, of course.

Lu: Yeah, of course. Yeah. The links to all the papers, by the way, are going to be in the description.

Tirth: Oh, fancy.

Lu: Yeah. All right, so this study was conducted in Guangzhou, China. This group captured and marked 30 females and 30 males of this species of bat and placed them into cages. They were fed, provided nesting material. They did exclude young bats and also pregnant females and lactating females.

Tirth: Why young bats?

Lu: Uh, like prepubescent bats were excluded.

Tirth: I see. Yes.

Lu: For obvious reasons.

Tirth: Okay, that makes sense. Yes. Oh, well I just, I don’t know how young, maybe they were inexperienced and they’re worried they couldn’t have sex.

Lu: Mm no. The equipment they used is a Pico 2000 series multimedia digital video recorder. Very fancy, very high-tech.

Tirth: Is this is this top of the line?

Lu: It’s top of the line. Top of the line. Yeah. They recorded from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

Tirth: Wow.

Lu: Yeah. And uh… Look, one criticism right away. The entire 12 hours of footage, not available. I looked, it’s not available. You know, that’s one criticism. Not all the data were made available. And they ended up observing 20 copulations from different pairs.

Tirth: In a single night.

Lu: In a single 12 hour…Well they had 30 females and 30 males.

Tirth: Uh-huh.

Lu: Yes. 20 different populations from different pairs.

Tirth: Two-thirds. That’s pretty incredible.

Lu: Well, honestly it could have been one male. We’re not sure.

Tirth: Was it?

Lu: They didn’t they didn’t report on, uh, that.

Tirth: Okay.

Lu: Okay. So, what did they find? Well…So in 14 of the 20 copulations, the female licked the shaft or the base of the male penis frequently. The average duration of penis licking was 19.14 seconds plus or minus 3.45 seconds, which is about 8.7% of the average duration of copulation.

Tirth: So the average copulation was less than two minutes.

Lu: The average copulation time…So here is the main point of the paper.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: If no fellatio occurred, the average copulation time was 122 seconds.

Tirth: That’s pretty long as it is.

Lu: Just over two minutes.

Tirth: That’s pretty long as it is.

Lu: Well, for you. For you, not for the rest of us, okay Tirth. Please, speak for yourself.

Tirth: I think people lie a lot, at least I’m being honest.

Lu: Yeah, sure. Uh-huh. So yeah, so that’s no fellatio, right? Just over two minutes. But if fellatio did occur, the average copulation time went up to 220 seconds.

Tirth: Wow.

Lu: It went up by 100 seconds.

Tirth: Wow. I would pay obscene amounts of money…

Lu: It’s incredible, right?

Tirth: to, uh, last that long.

Lu: Yeah. Because of the fellatio. And there’s a strong correlation between fellatio time and copulation time. The Pearson’s correlation, R, is 0.828.

Tirth: Wow.

Lu: Very strong correlation.

Tirth: I’ve almost never seen an R that high in anything I’ve seen or read.

Lu: Yeah, yeah.

Tirth: I think even for smoking and lung cancer, the R isn’t that high.

Lu: That’s how you know this is a good study. So…you might ask, what did they conclude from all this?

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: Well, they suspect that prolonged copulation may be a method of mate guarding by the female. You keep the male on you for 100 seconds longer, they have, that’s 100 seconds less time they’re going to spend chasing after other mates.

Tirth: Or playing video games.

Lu: Or, yes. Okay, yeah, good joke.

Tirth: Thank you.

Lu: And then also, potentially, prolonged copulation stimulates the pituitary gland in the female, which might increase the chances of fertilization. It’s very speculative, but uh, but you know, the results speak for themselves, I think. There’s a clear correlation between fellatio and copulation time.

Tirth: I’m convinced.

Lu: Yeah.

Tirth: I mean, I would just like to know what motivated this study in the first place. Are these people zoologists? Like, what are they?

Lu: So yeah, they are zoologists, I believe. Or bat hobbyists. I’m actually not 100% sure. Motivation, you know, motivation is an interesting question. You’re asking about the significance, right? Why did they do this?

Tirth: Basically, yes. What’s…is there a fertility crisis amongst fruit bats?

Lu: That’s a good question. Well, I think these fruit bats they noted are near threatened in terms of conservation status.

Tirth: I see.

Lu: Yeah. So, potentially, if they ever become endangered, uh this could be useful information to help them repopulate. But more important than that, I think this really gets at “what is science?”. Right?

Tirth: Mhmm.

Lu: Science as we know is fundamentally about evidence.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: And data, right? It’s about empiricism. It’s about a posteriori knowledge, not a priori knowledge.

Tirth: Well, it’s based…sometimes it’s informed heavily by a priori knowledge.

Lu: Yes, but ultimately, it’s about a posteriori knowledge.

Tirth: Which then becomes a priori knowledge going forward, right? I mean it’s a chain.

Lu: Mhmm. Meaning you can make hypotheses and assumptions, but they’re not worth much unless you have evidence.

Tirth: Correct.

Lu: So yeah, so Tirth, look, you can assume that fruit bats engage in fellatio.

Tirth: Uh-huh.

Lu: Right?

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: You can assume that fruit bat fellatio prolongs copulation time because fruit bats don’t have lips, and so the fellatio doesn’t feel as good. So it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t do anything for the male.

Tirth: They can’t get there.

Lu: Uh-huh. You can assume all these things, but you just can’t know until you have…

Tirth: until you actually do it.

Lu: the actual video evidence…

Tirth: And recorded it for 12 hours.

Lu: And recorded for 12 hours. Like I said, the video is available on the journal’s website. Um, and I kid you not, it is set to music.

Tirth: No, it’s not.

Lu: It is set to music.

Tirth: Wait, wait, wait. Is it…

Lu: I encourage everyone to go and watch it.

Tirth: Is it jazz music?

Lu: It’s not the kind of music you would expect.

Tirth: It’s not jazz music?

Lu: It’s not jazz music. It’s interesting. It’s an interesting choice. I’ll just say that. Uh, everyone should go and watch it for science. All right, what do you think Tirth?

Tirth: Uh, that was that was quite incredible. How many authors are on this paper?

Lu: How many? Uh, I’m not sure. I think five or six.

Tirth: Okay. And um…Let me ask you this. 12 hours of video footage of 30 mating pairs is a little, that’s a lot. Who do you think was tasked with watching every single minute of this footage? Was it an undergraduate? Was it a graduate student? Or was it the postdoc or was it the PI?

Lu: I would assume everybody had a go. They probably took turns.

Tirth: Just like the bats themselves, I suppose.

Lu: Yeah, yeah. And they probably had a, you know, like an old video store would have an adult section and you’d have a private little stall with a TV, a videotape player.

Tirth: I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know.

Lu: You’d have a curtain that you can draw. I assume they have one of those and people just took turns going inside and uh…having their way with the video they recorded.

Tirth: This is incredible.

Lu: All right, Tirth, well if there are no more questions, I turn it over to you.

Electric shock study

Tirth: All right, you ready for this?

Lu: Not really, but I’m here.

Tirth: This paper that I’m about to present is electrifying. It will shock you to your core.

Lu: Okay. Okay, let’s see. Let’s hear it.

Tirth: Okay. This is a case report that was published in 1991. The title is Failure of electric shock treatment for rattlesnake envenomation.

Lu: Okay. All right.

Tirth: This is published in the Anals, excuse me, Annals of Emergency Medicine in June 1991.

Lu: Interesting. Good journal.

Tirth: Oh, great journal. Excellent journal.

Lu: Both of them actually, the Annals and the Anals of Internal Medicine.

Tirth: Yes. Prime bedtime reading. There’s two authors on here, Richard Dart and Richard Gustafson, so it’s a tale of two Richards.

Lu: Great. Two Dicks, you could say.

Tirth: Yeah, Dick tales if you will.

Lu: Now, are they treating rattlesnakes with ECT [electroconvulsive therapy] or are they treating victims of snake bites?

Tirth: That’s an excellent question. Yeah. I had the exact same question before I delved into it.

Lu: Because the title’s not clear.

Tirth: No, it’s 100% not clear. Uh, within two lines or so, it was clear to me though that they’re actually treating a patient.

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: Well, rather it was a patient who self-treated himself…

Lu: Oh.

Tirth: and the sequelae thereof.

Lu: Okay, I like this.

Tirth: So I’m gonna read some excerpts, okay? I’m gonna read some excerpts from this.

Lu: Uh-huh.

Tirth: This is the introduction, okay? “The application of high voltage, low current electric shock treatment has been reported as an effective treatment for rattlesnake and other envenomations. This concept was proposed in a letter describing dramatic improvement of pain and swelling in victims of snakebite in a remote region of Ecuador.” And then it says, “Because of this, widespread adoption of this concept and in the sale of portable self-operated electric shock devices commenced in the United States in the 80s and 90s,” I suppose.

Lu: Okay. Now, is this uh, who’s buying these portable ECT devices?

Tirth: We don’t know, the records are sketchy. “We report a case demonstrating the potential danger and ineffectiveness of this process, even when applied immediately.” Okay? So it’s a case report. “The Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center was consulted concerning a 28-year-old man who had been handling his pet great basin rattlesnake…”

Lu: Mhm.

Tirth: “when he was bitten near the right upper lip.”

Lu: Now give us a sense, what how big is the snake? What is it? A yellow basin rattlesnake?

Tirth: A great basin rattlesnake.

Lu: A great basin rattlesnake.

Tirth: Yes. How big can they get?

Lu: Okay, probably not too big. I’m guessing…rattlesnake.

Tirth: They can grow…

Lu: Three, four feet?

Tirth: Yeah, yeah, 26 to 48 inches exactly.

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: Um, and then it goes on to say, this is what’s interesting to me, okay? All right, you ready for this? “The patient had a history of 14 prior bites…”

Lu: Mmm.

Tirth: “And had previously developed anaphylactic shock secondary to antivenin administration.” This guy is a repeat offender, and I don’t mean the snake, okay? The guy who owns the snake.

Lu: Yes. Well, you know, it happens when you make out with your snake every night.

Tirth: As one does, I suppose.

Lu: Yeah, you get bit on the lip 14 times.

Tirth: I suppose he missed that lesson in class, in school.

Lu: Yeah.

Tirth: Let me talk about the events that led him to go to the hospital, okay?

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: “The patient noted burning and swelling of the face within minutes of the bite. Based on his understanding of an article in an outdoorsman magazine, the patient and his neighbor had previously established a plan to use electric shock treatment if either was envenomated.” Which brings me to the next question. What is the neighbor doing with this guy’s snake?

Lu: It’s a thruple. What is it? A thruple? Or a thruple?

Tirth: A thruple. Yes. I’ve heard it both ways. I’ve heard it both ways. Anyway, let’s get back on track.

Lu: Now, also, is he one of the Dicks that’s an author of this paper?

Tirth: It’s actually unclear. It’s a good, that’s a very good question. There are two Dicks in here. Maybe they’re self-reporting.

Lu: It’s him and the neighbor?

Tirth: You know, they do have a corresponding address. We could email them and find out.

Lu: Oh, we should. Oh, that’s the other thing we could do with this podcast is email the authors after we talk about their paper.

Tirth: Oh, we should, we should email them. I mean, these guys are based out of the University of…

Lu: I mean, yeah, we have questions. We’re good scientists.

Tirth: Yes. We need the back story. These guys are based out of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: Uh, at least 30 years ago, or 34 years ago they were. Anyway, here we go, okay? “The patient was placed supine next to a car.” So this is immediately after he got bit. I guess the neighbor was around. So the patient was placed supine next to a car. “A spark plug wire was attached to his upper lip by wire with a small clip at each end.” Okay. This guy’s a pro, man. “The engine was started and repeatedly revved to 3,000 RPM for approximately 5 minutes.”

Lu: For some reason, I really thought he had like an ECT. He had like an actual machine. No, he just had some jumper cables.

Tirth: Jumper cables. He put it on his lip and it turned the car on. And it says, “the patient lost consciousness with the first electrical charge.” Like, no shit.

Lu: Okay. Also, where are the two clamps? One’s on his face?

Tirth: So one of them… One of them was attached to his upper lip.

Lu: Oh God.

Tirth: And I guess the other is at the car. Right on the side of the bite, I assume.

Lu: Right on the bottom lip? Upper lip and bottom lip?

Tirth: Uh, no, the other one’s just on the car, I think.

Lu: Oh, no, I mean, like is there, isn’t there a positive and a negative clamp?

Tirth: Oh, no, they’re not. They don’t mention that. No.

Lu: Okay. And I’m assuming there wasn’t a clamp that was grounded.

Tirth: It doesn’t say.

Lu: Okay, we can assume this is not a grounded uh, jump start.

Tirth: Listen, I am pretty sure about 80 years ago the Geneva Conventions banned this sort of thing, but here we are in Tucson, Arizona. I think they probably didn’t get news that this kind of stuff is outlawed. Anyway, not shockingly, they called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived 15 minutes later. The patient was unconscious and incontinent of stool.

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: Initial vital signs, his blood pressure was 100, his heart rate was 100, and respirations were 20.

Lu: Those don’t sound that bad.

Tirth: They…what was the last time you saw a live patient, Lu?

Lu: A live patient? Oh…

Tirth: Five years, six years?

Lu: Med school.

Tirth: Med school. Okay, so six years ago.

Lu: Mhmm.

Tirth: Mhmm. Pop quiz, what’s a what’s a normal blood pressure?

Lu: Uh, 250 over 170.

Tirth: No. That patient is probably having a hemorrhage.

Lu: Really?

Tirth: That’s not a normal blood pressure. No.

Lu: That’s what I measured myself at earlier this morning.

Tirth: You got some rock hard vessels, man.

Lu: Is that a problem?

Tirth: You better get that checked out.

Lu: Nah, I’ll be fine.

Tirth: We don’t want to lose you, star scientist. Anyway, they took him to the hospital. He continued to deteriorate. He was intubated at this point, an hour and 40 minutes in, his blood pressure was 62 now. Okay. Severe facial edema and ecchymosis, just reddening of the face were noted. The actual journal article has a has a picture of this unfortunate gentleman.

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: It just shows the massive swelling and all this other stuff. Essentially, he was in a very bad shape. He was in critical condition. He’s in a bad shape.

Lu: Because of the snake bite or because of the electric shock?

Tirth: I’m gonna say both.

Lu: Is that discussed?

Tirth: And it’s actually not clear to me which one is worse. I think it’s the electric shock that’s causing most of this.

Lu: Very possible.

Tirth: This guy basically shocked himself.

Lu: Mhm. Multiple times it sounds like.

Tirth: Oh multiple times. He said they revved the car engine repeatedly to 3,000 RPM.

Lu: Oh.

Tirth: Um…So, they gave him 27 vials of anti-venin in an 8-hour period. Eventually, eventually the lab abnormalities resolved. He still had some facial edema. Um, he needed like plastic surgery for his lip.

Lu: Again, from the snake bite or the clamp?

Tirth: Uh, it’s unclear.

Lu: Uh-huh. So, question I have is…

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: So they didn’t do an experiment. This is not an experiment. It’s like a case report.

Tirth: No, it’s a case study. Yes, correct.

Lu: Yeah, like observation of a single case, right? N of one, sample size of one.

Tirh: Yes. With some…with very light lit review.

Lu: Okay. If they were to do an experiment…

Tirth: Yeah.

Lu: It would be…make a guy, you know, make out with a snake.

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: Get bit and then either assign them to a no electric shock therapy group or an electric shock therapy group, right?

Tirth: Yes.

Lu: So they didn’t do that, but they still thought it was important to publish this…for what reason?

Tirth: Um, it’s unclear. If I had to speculate, it’s because this guy is unique. He was bitten 14 times before. And he still did this.

Lu: Basically, it’s to kink shame this guy. That’s the reason why they published this.

Tirth: Well, I would say…

Lu: This is of no use to anybody in medicine.

Tirth: Well, I will note that this was 1991. Times were different. Kink shaming probably didn’t exist as a concept.

Lu: That’s true. Yeah.

Tirth: Okay. But I agree. Maybe the author should issue, um, an addendum or a clarification or a letter to the editor.

Lu: Yeah. Okay. And we’re not clear which of the Dicks this guy is.

Tirth: No.

Lu: But he’s probably one of them.

Tirth: Mmm, maybe. Because it looks like…I mean, the affiliations are listed here. One of them says an MD, the other one doesn’t have anything next to his name.

Lu: Ah. Yes. I think we found our guy.

Tirth: But the affiliation also says that they’re affiliated with the poison and drug information center. So maybe that was the unfortunate, the guy on the other end of the call, I don’t know.

Lu: Mmm. Okay. Very very interesting. Now, what can our listeners take away from this?

Tirth: Our listeners, um, I would say a few things, okay? Number one is, if you have a pet rattlesnake, I think it’s completely fine to make out with it, okay? We’re not here to judge you and your preferences and your proclivities, okay? We’re really accepting of all comers. So, please do that. Just keep in mind that if the snake’s going to bite you, as snake is want to do, just go to the hospital. Don’t uh, don’t jump start yourself with his pickup truck and attach some jumper cables to your lips.

Lu: Or…

Tirth: I’ll say this, if you are into that stuff too, which is again, totally fine, no judging, okay?

Lu: Yeah, you know, if a guy is into making out with rattlesnakes, he’s probably also into having clamps put on his lips.

Tirth: Absolutely. But just keep them separate.

Lu: Keep them separate.

Tirth: Just keep them separate.

Lu: Okay. Not at the same time.

Tirth: Yes. Not at the same time. Moderation is key.

Lu: Okay.

Tirth: And then the other thing I’ll say is, if you’re an emergency room treating physician, just don’t kink shame people.

Lu: Very important.

Tirth: Let them live, let them be.

Lu: Very important.

Tirth: I understand the urge to uh, inform the public. You know, in their defense, maybe they’d seen a bunch of these types of cases and they were like, “Okay, this guy seems to have the most uh, um, educational value, I suppose.

Lu: Uh-huh. Well, nice job, Tirth. It’s a very, very interesting paper, very recreational.

Tirth: Thank you. Aim to please.