Quoted from my friend Chris Harper, President SHHS

I just got this email from Mark O'Shea. Let's see what kind of unity we can muster. Put this on all herp lists, MySpace, etc. It's herpers against the world!!!!!!!!

Hi Chris
Hope you are well and wishing you a successful 2008.
I know a different kind of voting is in the air in the US but this is real important
My friend David Williams, with whom I work on PNG elapids, is in with a chance of winning a holiday for himself and his wife for his humanitarian work to save snakebite victims, often at great personal risk - he received a near fatal taipan bite in December.
I would appreciate if you could just take a look at the website below and possibly give your support to David by voting for him.
He was leading in this competition but has been overtaken by a Pakistani ophthalmologist who registered over 1500 votes in a blink of an eye. Now in second place, but well ahead of third, it looks like a two horse race.
He deserves this prize for his important ground breaking, life-saving, and at times life-threatening research.
If you think this worthy please pass it on to others who you think may also wish to support David.
Perhaps you could ask venomousreptiles.org visitors to vote for David.
Closing date in 31st January and it is slipping away from him.
Best wishes
Mark
David Williams, who runs the PNG Snakebite Project in Port Moresby is trying to win a competition being
run by the Holiday Inn Hotel Chain, as a means of getting some PR for the project, and perhaps winning he
and his wife Rona the honeymoon they haven’t been able to afford since getting married 2 years ago.

Dave’s project suffers badly from under-funding, so he is keen to find any way he can to raise the profile of
snake bite injury in Papua New Guinea. If you don’t mind spending a few minutes casting some votes online
please follow the instructions below:

1 Go to this web site.. http://www.holidayinneverydayheroes.com/readmore.aspx?id=57&page=1

2 At the top right, click on "Register"....using your email address (Each e-mail address can only vote once)

3 Pick a password so you can get back in to vote after your email is validated...use anything!
(An email would be sent to your inbox)
4 Click on the "Complete the registration” button in the email and get taken back to the website
5 Click the view all stories....Go to "David Williams..."LIFE S-S-SAVER"... Click on "read more & vote"
6...Click on 5 medals equals 5 POINTS..(Make a comment if you wish)
7 Click "submit" .. and voila you’re done!!!
Please circulate this to your friends and ask them to vote as well.

I made a promo-video on my YouTube site too.
David William Promo

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There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

have voted for him, it would be nice if you commented on the other thread

Please elaborate

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There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

i would be interested on your comments to the thread on the handling of the green mamba, especially as you have taken off the video from view

Not on this thread. Please don't create distraction from this important thread.

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There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

Av just voted No 1963 it dont cost owt so do it

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Some of my collection
1-1 Hog's islands, 2-1 Rosy boa's, 1-2 Brazilians, 1-2 Hognose, 10-15 Corns, 2-3 Albino APH, 1-1 Tortoise, 0-1 Bosc

Hi all,
Just went online and voted. As part of his work in Papua New Guinea, David Williams published a guide to treatment for health workers and doctors called " Venomous Bites and Stings in Papua New Guinea".
I would highly recommend it to anybody interested in venoms and envenoming.
All the best,
Brian.

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All venoms are poisons but not all poisons are venoms

David Posted this on SHHS:

Mark emailed me to let me know he had posted a request for voting help here, and I wanted to just drop by and thank all of you (especially Chris and Al) for this tremendous gesture.

The work we are doing in PNG really is very important, because rather than just conducting research, we are actually effecting real change in the outcomes of snake bites. Three years ago 25.9% of children and 14.5% of adults admitted to the only major tertiary hospital here were dying after snake bite. With specific training for doctors and health workers, first aid training for local people, public awareness programs and our 24/7 advisory service in the Emergency Dept, those figures are now both below 1%. With help from Mark and WW we have established a live collection of venomous snakes and are about to begin development of a new antivenom product for treating Papuan taipan bites - one that we expect will cost 10% of the price of the current CSL antivenom, and be equally effective as well as safe to use.

There is still a long way to go with this work, but I believe that our multi-disciplinary approach is the right way to bring about sustainable change.

All of the work we do costs however, and the Australian Venom Research Unit has never had any specific funding for the work. And as Mark mentioned the costs are not all fiscal. Working with snakes like taipans in this environment has its challenges as I found out just over a month or so ago.

The main reason for entering the Holiday Inn competition was to try and win so that the resultant publicity, especially within the IHG Chain of Hotels, might help us to attract sponsors, and lift the general awareness of snake bite (which is one of the world's genuinely forgotten tropical diseases) ahead of an International Conference I am organising to be held in Melbourne, Australia in November this year. The holiday would also be nice, but as I haven't had a real holiday for over three years anyway, it is not the important issue.

The inaugural Conference "Global Issues in Clinical Toxinology" will be used to launch a Global Snake Bite Initiative that will seek funding from organisations such as the WHO, UNDP, World Bank and Clinton Global Initiative to tackle snake bite problems all around the world. We are launching the Call for Abstracts at the beginning of February, and the Registrations website will open mid-February.

If I can succeed in winning the Holiday Inn competition and become the promotional face of the hotel chain across the Asia-Pacific Region, I will be able to use that publicity to push the cause of the global Conference.

And if I don't win? Well as I said to Mark tonight I am absolutely floored by the support from all of you folks, and I reckon that really makes me the winner already.

Cheers


David

__________________
There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

Have you voted yet if not why not come on no crap excuse...

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Some of my collection
1-1 Hog's islands, 2-1 Rosy boa's, 1-2 Brazilians, 1-2 Hognose, 10-15 Corns, 2-3 Albino APH, 1-1 Tortoise, 0-1 Bosc

Hi Folks,

I want to thank everyone once again for all their support in this contest. It is now on the final straight and will be over at 11:59 pm Singapore time on 31 January - check to see how this translates to your own local time (the UK is 8 hrs behind Singapore for example, so the UK cutoff will be 3.59pm) if you are going to post last minute votes...

A number of people have been monitoring the voting for the last couple of weeks, and there appears to be a very clear pattern emerging that involves the other main competitor pulling in very large numbers of votes, very quickly, at extremely unusual times.

Last night for example he posted 530 votes between midnight & 3:00 am (Islamabad local time) and another 690 votes between 3:00-5:35 am. Interestingly the first Muslim morning prayer session (Fajr) started in Pakistan at 5:40 am today...

On the 28th January he posted 395 votes between midnight and 01:20 am, followed by another block of 295 votes between 5:00-6:30 pm that same day... in between he got only 10 votes - during the middle of the Pakistani working day.

It seems highly unlikely that these sudden bursts of voting, mostly very late at night could be the result of hundreds of random people accessing the site and deciding to vote for the same guy. What is much more likely is that he and few family/friends are mass-registering email addresses and then submitting large blocks of votes at time when they think nobody is likely to notice a sudden rise...

This has tempted some people to suggest that my supporters should do the same, but I would like to ask that nobody do this, because it may result in votes being disqualified later by the promoters.

A lot of herpers from all over the world have cast votes for me in the past month or so, and it would be a terrible shame all that went to waste, if over-enthusiasm or frustration at what appears to be blatant cheating by someone else, caused someone to do the same, and thereby jeopardized my own entry.

All we can do is play fair, and trust the promoters to check the validity of the votes after the contest finishes tomorrow night. They won't be declaring a winner until the 14th February, so I am sure they intend to sure those two weeks to compare email addresses to IP or MAC addresses on the originating emails, and if that is the case I am confident that any cheating will be uncovered.

Even if it seems unfair, please don't be tempted to copy the competition's tactic. I am sure that there is some leeway to allow for family members who share a computer using the same machine to vote, but I am pretty sure than the Holiday Inn will end up disqualifying votes if they find 10 or more email addresses all originating from the same IP or MAC address.

Cheers, and once again, thanks for all your support.


David Williams
http://www.kingsnake.com/aho/aho.html
AVRU - Research Area


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