Girl’s $143k bill for snakebite treatment reveals antivenin price gouging

She arrived at St. Vincent Evansville hospital in Indiana by air ambulance where doctors gave her four vials of an antivenin called CroFab. Crofab, like other antivenins, is made using a standard process: antivenin manufacturers milk snakes and other venomous creatures for their venom, which they then inject in small, harmless amounts into animals (in this case, sheep; in others, horses). She’s the founding director of the VIPER Institute (Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology, and Emergency Response Institute) at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson, which helped develop Crofab, among other antivenins, using government grants.

Source: arstechnica.com