This guy is not using his head. A Cobra does not equate to a pittbull, and it is not the responsibility of our healthcare system to stock antivenin for all dangerous species that are not native to the province.

I don't think laws need to change to protect stupid people from their own actions. This guy is a moron. If he believes his antivenom will work, then he has to inject himself. He brought this on himself. Nobody keeps poisonous snakes around the house.

Yes, its true - anyone who owns a cobra should expect to be bit. And its also true that a hospital would not (and should not) administer medication that they did not obtain themselves. However, the point here is that the hospital and poison control did NOT put their processes into effect and take the necessary steps to obtain their own antivenin which they COULD have administered. So no matter how foolish it is to have a pet cobra, the hospital still should have done whatever necessary to obtain the antivenin, and they could have played politics after they treated the patient (even a stupid patient).

"Hansen complained that the Surrey Memorial Hospital doesn't carry antivenin for cobra bites."

Could it be because cobras aren't native to Canada? Gee, I wonder! I hope this brainless moron loses his finger. Stop wasting our medicare money on idiots like this!

[Glenn notes: Medicare isn't native to Canada, either.]

He says it feels like a gunshot wound. How would he know?

Too bad it isn't just his finger or we could chalk up another win for Darwin. =\

--chuck

'Surrey Man'--sounds like 'Piltdown Man', doesn't it? If the source hadn't been CBC I would seriously have doubted the veracity of this story. Fortunately Mother Nature, red of tooth and claw, eventually takes care of evolutionary dead-ends such as Surrey Man.