More than one Australian animal can cause sudden death, but it was the painless passing of a young man stung by a marine snail 70 years ago which prompted a Melbourne academic to look to toxic molluscs for a cure for pain. The 27-year-old died with his mother at his side after being stung by a cone shell snail while on holiday on an island off the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland in 1935.Reading about the death in the Medical Journal of Australia decades later, Melbourne University associate professor Bruce Livett was struck by the painless nature of the man’s death."There were very good descriptions of his death by his mother and the people around. He died a painless death, not at any stage did he feel any pain,” Livett told AFP on Wednesday.The man slipped into unconsciousness shortly before his death but seemed to be at peace during the five to seven hours it took him to expire."I thought, what is it that has dulled the pain? I went searching for the analgesic in the venom,” Livett said.A decade later, Livett and researchers at Melbourne University isolated what they hope is an analgesic drug in the conus victoriae, a species of marine cone snail species found in Western Australian waters.The drug is eight weeks into the first clinical trials and will shortly progress to the second stage, said Livett, who hopes it could be used to medicate people with extreme pain from nerve damage, or neuropathic pain, caused by illnesses such as diabetes, cancer and AIDS.
