A few years ago, an Egyptian young man, called Mohamed Hamdy Bashta, abandoned his university degree in archaeology and devoted himself to hunt scorpions in the country's deserts and shores in order to extract their venom for pharmaceutical uses.
The 25-year-old young man became now the owner of the Cairo Venom Company, which is specialized in extracting venoms from scorpions and snakes. The project houses 80,000 scorpions in various farms across Egypt as well as a range of snakes, also kept for their venom.
The scorpions, caught using a colored ultraviolet radiation, are exposed to a tiny electric current to stimulate the release of the venom, one gram of which can produce between 20,000 and 50,000 doses of antivenom.
"A gram of scorpion venom can worth $10, 000," Bashta said, adding, I export the venom to Europe and the U.S. where it is used to make antivenom and a range of other medicines, including for conditions such as hypertension.
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