Jude McNally, RPh, DABAT
Managing Director, Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center
Jude McNally has always been interested in Southwestern animals. But he never thought it was possible to make a career out of that interest—until he attended The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.
“[Former faculty member] Al Picchioni invited me to see the poison center,” McNally says. “I walked in the door and I loved it. I just wanted to be a part of it.”
McNally began volunteering in the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center as a student in 1981. That same year, he was hired as the center’s first intern.
“I graduated in 1982, and I’ve been working here ever since,” he says. He is now managing director, supervising the daily operations.
In the 26 years he’s spent at the center, McNally’s had many exciting opportunities—among them visiting Russia and Almaty, Kazakhstan.
“I went to Kazakhstan twice,” McNally says. “We were helping them open a poison control center—and they did open a poison control center, the first one in the newly independent states.”
His travels to Russia, to Moscow and Vladivostock, were of a slightly different nature.
“It was about snake research,” he says. “We were investigating whether an antivenom we were working on here would work on their snakes,” he says.
McNally says the antivenom did work and was later approved by the FDA. He says Russia has some snakes—not as many as the Southwest, but some that are very similar to Southwestern snakes.
“I think one of the things which has allowed me to travel and give lectures is the fact that the American Southwest has so many poisonous and venomous species,” he says. ”We’re the only people who really have the opportunity to develop expertise on them.”
McNally says the COP poison center has been working on scorpion and snake antivenom projects since the mid 1990s. He’s recently been working in Mexico with a drug company there—doing research on snakes.
“It started as studying scorpions, and naturally we began working on snakes next,” he says.
Mexico doesn’t have more venomous snake species than Arizona, but it does have many more dangerous scorpions.
“In Arizona, we have the only scorpion in the U.S. that can cause life-threatening symptoms,” McNally says. “We administer approximately 200 treatments with antivenom for it each year. In Mexico, the government buys and uses more than 250,000 vials of the antivenom each year.”
Whether he does research in the VIPER Institute, formerly an arm of the poison center, or assists callers in the poison center by giving advice and assistance, McNally’s main interest is toxicology.
“Toxicology is the study of everything,” McNally says. “Everything is toxic—you can be exposed to too much water, too much of anything, and that can be toxic. In toxicology, you try to understand what that ‘too much’ is, and then how to treat it.
“You can’t be bored—you can work in toxicology with plants, minerals, animals.”