June 27, 2011
Immune ... snake venom supplier Bill Haast. Photo: Getty Images
Bill Haast, 1910-2011.
Bill Haast turned his childhood fascination with snakes into a long career as a roadside showman, a supplier of venom and a man seemingly immune to deadly snake bites.
For decades, Haast ran the Miami Serpentarium tourist attraction in Florida but his main occupation was as a leading producer of venom for use in snakebite serums.
He owned up to 10,000 snakes at a time and had supplies of venom from 200 species of poisonous reptiles from around the world. By the 1990s, he was providing 36,000 samples of venom to pharmaceutical laboratories each year.
Advertisement: Story continues below Snake bites were a constant occupational hazard, leading Haast to adopt an unusual regimen of self-medication. In the 1940s he began to inject himself with diluted amounts of cobra venom, which he gradually increased.
He developed an immunity to most snake bites and became a staunch believer in what he considered the medical benefits of venom. In 1954, he was bitten by a blue krait, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. ''I had never heard of a krait bite victim ever surviving,'' Haast told the Associated Press in 1996. ''I felt like the skin had been stripped from my body, like every nerve in my teeth was exposed, like my hair was being ripped out of my head.''
But Haast recovered and soon went back to work. The snake died 10 days later.
In time, Haast's venom-enriched blood came to possess healing properties. Transfusions from his blood helped save the lives of more than 20 snake-bite victims around the globe.
William Edward Haast was born December 30, 1910, in New Jersey and captured his first snake when he was seven. He dropped out of high school to be a snake handler in a travelling carnival and, in the 1930s, worked for an Everglades moonshiner. The job gave him ample opportunity to search the swamps for snakes.
He later became an engineer for Pan American Airways and flew all over the world, often bringing back exotic snakes, he said, in his toolbox.
He began his work on the medical properties of venom in 1946 and opened the Miami Serpentarium two years later. Haast put on five shows a day, demonstrating how to extract venom from poisonous snakes.
Pythons, iguanas, large turtles and crocodiles were on display but after a six-year-old boy was killed by a crocodile in 1977, Haast was disconsolate. He closed the attraction in 1984.
Well into old age, he injected himself with a cocktail of venoms from 32 lizards and snakes. ''I could become a poster boy for the benefits of venom,'' he told The Miami Herald in 2006. ''If I live to be 100, I'll really make the point.''
He is survived by his third wife, two daughters, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
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