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Would you expect to find a chimpanzee poison that doesn't hurt people? What about a rat poison that doesn't hurt people? An insect poison? A fungus poison? A ba
by xkcd-sucks 10y ago
Would you expect to find a chimpanzee poison that doesn't hurt people? What about a rat poison that doesn't hurt people? An insect poison? A fungus poison? A bacteria poison?
Biological machinery is remarkably well-conserved, to the point where we can use fish, worms, etc. as reasonable approximations of human biology. Finding fungus poisons that don't have terrible side effects is in practice very difficult, and even antibiotics that don't hurt people are pretty tricky. So it's not terribly faulty reasoning.
- larsiusprime 10y ago> What about a rat poison that doesn't hurt people? You mean Coumadin (Warfarin), the popular blood thinner? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin It is literally Rat Poison.
- iak8god 10y agoWarfarin is also people poison if you take enough. An appropriate clinical dose is a few milligrams.
- Banthum 10y agoWell, anything is people poison if you take enough. Forced consumption of sufficient water can kill someone. Toxicity isn't really yes/no, it's always a matter of dosage.
- iak8god 10y ago> Well, anything is people poison if you take enough. Yes, but that's not interesting or really relevant. As someone else pointed out, Warfarin is people poison if you take the same amount that's normally used to poison rats.
- zeveb 10y agoIn fairness, I think if a man ingested the same proportion a rat ingests, he'd be poisoned too.
- Spooky23 10y agoYes, the blood thinner that needs tight monitoring and dietary restrictions to safely take, and causes >30,000 life threatening or fatal incidents every year in the US.
- LordKano 10y agoWhat about a rat poison that doesn't hurt people? An insect poison? A fungus poison? A bacteria poison? Permethrin and cypermethrin come to mind. Highly toxic to arthropods but much less so to mammals.