Ellie Lobel, a 45-year-old woman, wanted to end her life. A nuclear physicist by profession, she had spent 15 years in a wheelchair. Physical illness and failing memory had left her deeply depressed.

When Ellie, a mother of three, was 27, she was bitten by a tick. Apart from a rash there were no immediate problems, but some time later many symptoms appeared. For three months she had flu-like symptoms and terrible pain throughout her body. She had been infected with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and had Lyme disease, which is reported to affect about 3 lakh people a year in America.

Most painful of all, doctors could not work out what was wrong with her. They named a different disease each time: multiple sclerosis, then lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia. More than a year after she fell ill, none of them had realised she had Borrelia. By the time they did, it was too late. Ellie was bedridden, and the wheelchair was her only support.

Ellie could do nothing on her own and had a caregiver. Her children had grown up and lived their own lives. She looked for a way out of life confined to a wheelchair, and believed she might live only another three or four months like this.

It was June 2011. She went to a village in California to die. But there, instead of death, Ellie's life began again. One sunny morning she went out with her caregiver. Suddenly a bee stung her on the forehead, and then swarms of bees surrounded her and began stinging her all over.

Ellie had no way to escape. Unable to move her, the caregiver ran to save herself from the bees. Ellie sat covering her face and accepted it as fate. She had come there to die, after all, and consoled herself that perhaps this was how death would come.

Ellie had a severe allergy to bee venom. A bee had stung her once when she was two, and she suffered anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis can cause a drop in the body's defences, swelling, nausea and narrowing of the airways, and can be fatal. She survived that time, but had feared bees ever since childhood.

This time Ellie could not hold out for long. Soon she had trouble breathing and passed out. Some time later her caregiver returned and found her unconscious. She assumed Ellie might be dead, but took her to hospital anyway.

Within a few hours at the hospital, Ellie developed severe pain and fever. The likely medical explanation, the report says, is a Herxheimer reaction, caused by toxins released as harmful bacteria inside the body die.

Three days later Ellie noticed that her pain had eased and the fog she had been in had lifted. Her memory was returning and she could walk. Once recovered, Ellie began research herself. She found a small 1997 study showing that bee venom contains a special peptide called melittin, which dissolves the cell membranes of bacteria. Melittin directly disables Borrelia.

Ellie then began apitherapy at home, applying bee stings regularly: ten stings a day, three days a week. After thousands of stings over three years, she became fully healthy. She still applies stings now and then, just for extra immunity.

Ellie now lives in San Jose in the United States and researches bee venom for Lyme disease. She has a large bee farm at home, where venom is collected by a safe method that does not kill the bees. The venom, more valuable than gold, is now being used experimentally in laboratories at the University of New Haven.

The idea of fighting poison with poison is not new or part of modern medicine alone. Bee venom has been used in East Asia since the second century to treat the effects of harmful poisons. In traditional Chinese medicine, scorpion venom is recognised as a powerful medicine, used for everything from eczema to epilepsy.

The story that Mithridates VI, king of Pontus and a fearsome enemy of Rome, used steppe viper venom to stop bleeding is a legend with no firm historical evidence. But he was indeed an expert in toxicology, known for his experiments with poisons, and according to some historical accounts he used viper venom to heal wounds on the battlefield.

The report cites the BBC and Smithsonian Magazine as its sources.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.