Have you heard the story about the scientific gold in Gila monster venom?

With what's happening in Washington these days, it's a tale worth telling.

The best starting point for this decades-long drama is the late 1980s at the VA Hospital in the Bronx. That's where young endocrinologist John Eng, who was treating veterans with diabetes and whose research specialty was peptide hormones, was seeking to identify new hormones whose benefits for human health had yet to be tested. After studying guinea pigs and chinchillas, he began casting about for different animals.

That's when he happened upon studies from researchers at the National Institutes of Health who had found that some snake and lizard venoms caused inflammation of the pancreas, which makes insulin. They were particularly interested in the venom of the Gila monster, a fortuitous focus with a major health care payoff. 

 Gila monsters live in the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico. Heavy and slow-moving, they live underground for nearly 95% of their........

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