Scorpion Venom

A while ago I wrote a post about expensive liquids. At that time I had found a site that said that scorpion venom was the most expensive liquid, and I wondered what it was used for.

Now I know why it's so expensive.

I was listening to a podcast (which I can't seem to find right now) that explained that scorpion venom is actually used in cancer research. It is very, very, very difficult to find something that will only kill cancer cells and not healthy cells, but apparently scorpion venom tends to attack certain cancer cells first. They made a synthetic, radioactive version of this venom and inject it into people with brain tumors called gliomas, and the hope is that the radioactive venom will target just the gliomas and not the other cells. The radioactivity will kill just those cells.

This is still in the early testing period, but I think it's an awesome idea. I figure that cancer research is a pretty good reason to buy scorpion venom. Maybe I could get a scorpion farm and collect venom and sell it to research institutions...

I wonder how you even collect venom from a scorpion?
 ... Now I know