Do you have a citation for the Italian study? I'd be interested in reading it (although my area of academia is math and computer science, not medicine).

I'm prepared to be open-minded about it, and your explanation certainly sounds plausible, but the fact that 3 doctors in the US swear by it isn't particularly convincing to me, without some sort of controlled study. Out of the entire USA, you could probably find three GPs who believe just about anything. The only academic paper I was able to find (admittedly, I only did the one quick search yesterday) was the WEM Journal review, which found it to be ineffective.

The thousand-plus cases reported in Ecuador may have been part of a clinical trial, but it sounds to me very anecdotal. (Do you have a source for this data as well?) The WEM Journal article, IIRC, cited at least one case where the patient was treated with both electro-shock and conventional anti-venin treatments, so it's impossible to know which treatment effected the recovery.

I agree with you, the Darwin award guy was so over the top, it's impossible to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of the technique, other than it's probably not easy or safe to improvise an electric shock device in the field.