Sao Paulo fire destroys one of the largest collections of dead snakes

Police in Sao Paulo were yesterday investigating the cause of a fire that destroyed one of the world's largest collection of dead snakes. The 85,000-strong snake collection, used by scientists to develop vaccines and medicines, was destroyed with an estimated 450,000 spider and scorpion specimens when fire swept through the Butantan Institute's archive.

"We have lost everything and this is a loss for humanity," the collection's curator, Francisco Franco, said. "The snakes … were used as the basis for studies and to increase our knowledge of the biodiversity of snakes. All of the snakes were lost. Today there is nothing left." The Butantan Institute was founded at the start of the 20th century when Sao Paulo's governors looked to Brazilian scientists after an outbreak of bubonic plague in the port city of Santos. Over the decades, with Sao Paulo a booming centre of coffee production, researchers sought vaccines against snakebites to protect coffee harvesters working in the fields.



Today the state-funded institute is one Brazil's most respected biomedical research units, responsible for producing about 90% of vaccines used in Brazil, including recently vaccines against H1N1 flu. Recent years have seen the institute invest in the hunt for natural vaccines in the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian media reports said tearful academics and researchers reacted angrily to the loss, claiming the archive building was not equipped with a fire alarm or sprinkler system.

"It is an absolute calamity. I don't have the words to describe it," Otavio Marques, a snake specialist, said. "My whole career was based on this collection." "This loss of knowledge about our biodiversity is incalculable," said Franco, the curator. "No money could even come close [to replacing it]."