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XMNN posted:I think it's one of those toxins animals get from bacteria/their diet rather than synthesising themselves, like poison dart frog's poison. That might explain it being in a bunch of different animals. According to the Wikipedia article about batrachotoxin: "While it is not an antidote, the membrane depolarization can be prevented or reversed by either tetrodotoxin (from puffer fish), which is a noncompetitive inhibitor" So... the cure for the most deadly animal poison in the world: the second most deadly poison in the world.
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May 2, 2014 04:13
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zygnal posted:According to the Wikipedia article about batrachotoxin: It's interesting how many cures or treatments for things end up being poisons themselves. Ethylene glycol ingestion has the most "fun" cure - getting blackout drunk. Chemotherapy drugs are often poisons that hopefully kill the cancer slightly faster than they kill the patient. Even the most deadly poison of all, botulinum toxin, which rips nerves apart like nothing else can, is used to treat migraines and related conditions. In college we did a bit on cis-platin, one of the earliest chemotherapy drugs, and how it fucks up cell division by sticking to DNA and preventing its replication. When used on e. coli, it stops being able to divide at all, and instead the cells simply grow longer and longer as they get ready to divide and stop halfway, then try again and again. You end up with giant snakes of e. coli sitting there going "wtf?". With cancer, because cancer cells divide so rapidly, anything that prohibits cell division is going to mess it up, even if the mechanism for programmed cell death has been disabled. However it is a nasty poison with a long list of side effects. Complicated animal and plant poisons are the most fascinating of all, such intricate molecules and enzymes with very specific mechanisms of action, that interfere with maybe one vital function, stop just one little part of your metabolism, or denature maybe one seemingly pointless protein. In the right circumstances, these poisons could become medicines. Edit: vvv I stick by my assertion that ethyl alcohol is both the cause and the solution to all of life's problems. IronClaymore has a new favorite as of 07:09 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 05:11
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Ethanol works at treating ethylene glycol (or methanol) poisoning, but don’t be fooled; fomepizole is better.
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May 2, 2014 06:03
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IronClaymore posted:Even the most deadly poison of all, botulinum toxin, which rips nerves apart like nothing else can, is used to treat migraines and related conditions. Whenever I'm feeling down, I remind myself that we live in a world where rich people have poison injected into their faces, and everything seems just a hair better.
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May 2, 2014 07:31
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Phy posted:Whenever I'm feeling down, I remind myself that we live in a world where rich people have poison injected into their faces, and everything seems just a hair better. And that that particular brand of poison is being used on kids that have muscular spasm issues to make them work properly again  people posted:mercury pictures
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May 2, 2014 08:02
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IronClaymore posted:As for mercury in soil, I remember hearing about areas of Mexico where the soil is so thick with mercury you can pick up a handful and squeeze it, and mercury drips out. Mine tailings from gold mining over hundreds of years. (I probably read about it in this thread!) Considering the lax environmental policies of the United States (and, honestly, almost every country in the world), there will be plenty of foods with decent amounts of mercury in them. Again, it probably won't be enough to cause your brain to melt, don't stop eating just because you're worried about mercury, malnutrition makes your brain melt even faster. Growing up near the St. Clair river, I heard similar stories about the mercury from various chemical refineries pooling at the bottom of the river to such an extent that scuba divers could scoop it up in their hands. Thankfully they've done a pretty outstanding job of cleaning everything up since then, all things considered.
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May 2, 2014 08:27
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What would happen if you drank heavy water?
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May 2, 2014 09:10
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Memento posted:And that that particular brand of poison is being used on kids that have muscular spasm issues to make them work properly again One of my old classmates' brother gets regular botox injections to combat muscle spasms. The difference it makes is absolutely astounding. He goes from being unable to function unassisted in normal life, to nearly 100% free of spasms.
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May 2, 2014 09:30
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IronClaymore posted:It's interesting how many cures or treatments for things end up being poisons themselves. Ethylene glycol ingestion has the most "fun" cure - getting blackout drunk. Chemotherapy drugs are often poisons that hopefully kill the cancer slightly faster than they kill the patient. Even the most deadly poison of all, botulinum toxin, which rips nerves apart like nothing else can, is used to treat migraines and related conditions.
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May 2, 2014 09:37
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:What would happen if you drank heavy water? Nothing unless you drank heavy water, and only heavy water, in large amounts for an extended period of time. You'd have to replace about 50% of the water in your body with heavy water to feel any ill effects. If you did, it'd shut down your bone marrow and you'd bleed to death/die of an infection. Loops has a new favorite as of 10:05 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 10:02
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Loops posted:Nothing unless you drank heavy water, and only heavy water, in large amounts for an extended period of time. You'd have to replace about 50% of the water in your body with heavy water to feel any ill effects. If you did, it'd shut down your bone marrow and you'd bleed to death/die of an infection. Taken from an IAEA report on using D2O to measure body composition: quote:"Animal studies have shown that tissues containing more than 15% of deuterium labelled water exhibit a multitude of effects, including impaired protein and nucleic acid synthesis, altered conformation and stability of biopolymers, altered rates of enzymatic reactions, impaired cell division and morphological changes" The reference they use: JONES, P.J., LEATHERDALE, S.T., Stable isotopes in clinical research: Safety reaffirmed, Clin. Sci. 80 (1991) 277–280.
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May 2, 2014 10:14
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Loops posted:Nothing unless you drank heavy water, and only heavy water, in large amounts for an extended period of time. You'd have to replace about 50% of the water in your body with heavy water to feel any ill effects. If you did, it'd shut down your bone marrow and you'd bleed to death/die of an infection.
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May 2, 2014 10:25
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Zemyla posted:Not to mention atropine, a deadly poison found in nightshade, is used to treat organophosphate poisoning like from nerve gas.
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May 2, 2014 10:50
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Collateral Damage posted:I toyed with the idea of a beer brewed from heavy water yesterday, until I looked up how much 2H2O costs. United Nuclear sells it for about $700 per kilogram, which in volume would be slightly less than a liter. Sigma Aldrich is even more expensive. And then there's the risk of your yeast deciding it didn't like it; leaving you with a very expensive malt and no easy way to use it.
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May 2, 2014 11:17
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Computer viking posted:And then there's the risk of your yeast deciding it didn't like it; leaving you with a very expensive malt and no easy way to use it. gently caress it if you are already using goddamn heavy water to make beer just order your own fermentation enzymes and simulate the yeast reaction. Make one bottle of the worst most expensive beer known to man. E: poo poo you could probably just get a buttload of zymase from NEB for a bunch of loving cash and boom. No need for no dang yeast Rexicon1 has a new favorite as of 12:00 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 11:53
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Platystemon posted:Ethanol works at treating ethylene glycol (or methanol) poisoning, but don’t be fooled; fomepizole is better. Yea, fomepizole is better, but it also costs upwards of 4,000$ to treat some hillbilly who made a batch of moonshine with way more methanol than ethanol. It's better just to pump him full of booze to keep his alcohol dehydrogenase busy while the liver sorts out the loving mess.
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May 2, 2014 12:13
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Rexicon1 posted:Yea, fomepizole is better, but it also costs upwards of 4,000$ to treat some hillbilly who made a batch of moonshine with way more methanol than ethanol. It's better just to pump him full of booze to keep his alcohol dehydrogenase busy while the liver sorts out the loving mess. how much fomepizole does 4k get you?
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May 2, 2014 12:34
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Say Nothing posted:Well, if you're going to talk about Belladonna and atropine, Datura is a good source and contains other tropane alkaloids like scopolamine and hyoscyamine. The amount of these substances can vary as much as five-fold depending on where the plant is growing and how old it is, which is probably why so many recreational drug users overdose on it. Is this Scopolamine Documentary legit? Seems pretty crazy if any of this is even half true.
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May 2, 2014 13:42
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Rexicon1 posted:Yea, fomepizole is better, but it also costs upwards of 4,000$ to treat some hillbilly who made a batch of moonshine with way more methanol than ethanol. It's better just to pump him full of booze to keep his alcohol dehydrogenase busy while the liver sorts out the loving mess. Don't you mean kidneys? I thought the whole point of using ethanol to treat methanol poisoning is that the liver is so busy with the ethanol, the methanol doesn't get broken down* and is eventually filtered out the kidneys into the urine.
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May 2, 2014 13:52
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DrBouvenstein posted:Don't you mean kidneys? From what I understand, the ethanol flooding the liver almost saturates the alchohol dehydrogenase which means the methanol is broken down in the liver at a rate that allows the liver to deal with its toxic metabolites without them building up in other parts of the body. As it's not actually the methanol itself which is poisonous but its metabolites, it can sit there for a bit while the liver slowly deals with it. Maybe I misunderstand but I don't think the kidneys have much to do with it.
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May 2, 2014 14:04
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No the problem is with methanol is that the body is really quick to break it down into the thing that is actually toxic (Formaldahyde and then formic acid) so you pump the body full of ethanol since they use the same enzymes and ethanol is broken down first preferentially, so instead of getting a ton of formaldehyde forming in your body at once you get a little bit it over a longer period time, which the kidneys can filter out before it does damage. edit: gently caress, beaten.
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May 2, 2014 14:08
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IronClaymore posted:
Same thing with methanol poisoning. Methanol gets eaten by alcohol dehydrogenase and turned into formaldehyde, which gets eaten by aldehyde dehydrogenase and turned into formic acid, which turns off your mitochondria and kills you. So administer ethanol, it binds up all the alcohol dehydrogenase, and the methanol just gets excreted in the kidneys instead.
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May 2, 2014 14:09
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IronClaymore posted:In college we did a bit on cis-platin, one of the earliest chemotherapy drugs, and how it fucks up cell division by sticking to DNA and preventing its replication. When used on e. coli, it stops being able to divide at all, and instead the cells simply grow longer and longer as they get ready to divide and stop halfway, then try again and again. You end up with giant snakes of e. coli sitting there going "wtf?". With cancer, because cancer cells divide so rapidly, anything that prohibits cell division is going to mess it up, even if the mechanism for programmed cell death has been disabled. However it is a nasty poison with a long list of side effects. I can confirm the cis-platin messes up your week. And smells peculiar. Zemyla posted:Not to mention atropine, a deadly poison found in nightshade, is used to treat organophosphate poisoning like from nerve gas. Isn't atropine one of the ones optometrists still use to "relax" the eye muscles, too?
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May 2, 2014 14:48
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The last time I had it used on me, they used it to dilate my pupils if I remember correctly. Man, I hated light that day so much.
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May 2, 2014 15:05
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Suicide Sam E. posted:Isn't atropine one of the ones optometrists still use to "relax" the eye muscles, too? Yup, that's one of the standard dilating drops. Get those in, have the exam done, then head out going ahh what a nice sunny daOH GOD MY RETINAS OW gently caress BRIGHT
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May 2, 2014 15:10
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Where do people get all this stuff? I tried to buy mercury but its illegal for some stupid reason. Even my technical alcohol says "ILLEGAL APPLICATION IS AGAINST THE LAW". Norway is such a lame country, cannot even buy guns without being a hunter.
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May 2, 2014 15:13
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Michael Jackson posted:Where do people get all this stuff? I tried to buy mercury but its illegal for some stupid reason. Even my technical alcohol says "ILLEGAL APPLICATION IS AGAINST THE LAW". Norway is such a lame country, cannot even buy guns without being a hunter. You can buy mercury on ebay here in the UK.  Saying that, you can buy a lot of random metals off of ebay. Even a license to buy restricted chemicals isn't all that hard to get. One of my friends dad was a brewer and had a chemical license as apparently being a brewer necessitates using some weird chemicals sometimes apparently. The only stuff that is very harshly restricted are radioactive materials, although you can buy radioactive standards relatively easily I believe, and drug precursors. A story told around my chemistry department involves a professor wanting to buy a chemical that was needed for a synthesis, but was also on the list of restricted drug precursors. When the government investigated what he wanted kilos of this material for and rejected it, he just told them he'd make the precursor himself which was apparently ok. The advantages of being good at organic chemistry I guess.
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May 2, 2014 15:37
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His name wasn't Walter, was it?
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May 2, 2014 15:41
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KozmoNaut posted:His name wasn't Walter, was it? Unfortunately not. I think it was Barry.
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May 2, 2014 15:43
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Barry White?
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May 2, 2014 15:45
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Memento posted:Cheers guys, I just sent these around the office, much mild chortling was had.
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May 2, 2014 16:23
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A friend of mine used to have a license to import "chemical weapon precursors" (actually just "turbo tear gas" as he put it) for his PhD but the only thing they had to lock away in the lab was the ephedrine as it was a precursor for mdma. Of course, with a PhD in organic chemistry mdma was, as he put it, easy if he actually wanted to.
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May 2, 2014 21:30
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Of course, with a PhD in organic chemistry mdma was, as he put it, easy if he actually wanted to. If you know your way around lab procedure pretty much any of that stuff is easy, it's when you're inventing a new synthesis that your PhD really comes into play. Walter White's stuff in Breaking Bad was more of a feat of chemical engineering than chemistry.
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May 2, 2014 23:05
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DrBouvenstein posted:Don't you mean kidneys? I read up on this a bit and I think you are technically right. I was thinking that methanol was conjugated to something in order to excrete it in the bile or urine, like with other detoxification systems. But it seems that methanol just needs to straight up get pissed out.
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May 2, 2014 23:40
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Of course, with a PhD in organic chemistry mdma was, as he put it, easy if he actually wanted to. First year orgo students learn everything they need to make MDMA. Id imagine a PhD could make really high yield batches of it in their sleep. Hell, I remember in my sophomore orgo class we did a reaction to make aspirin from wintergreen oil and my professor straight up told us "look guys, this is basically the exact same method to make cocaine and meth so please don't be dipshits and make this stuff outside of here" Three months later they found a HUGE lab under one of the older dorms where some girls were making meth and cocaine.
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May 2, 2014 23:47
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I was also given the "Jesus christ you guys, here it is, how to make meth. See how easy this poo poo is? Now don't loving do it" speech during undergrad.
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May 3, 2014 00:03
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Actually I'm pretty sure said freind's current position as a post doc replaced a guy who blew up his lab making meth. Failing to make meth as an organic chemistry post doc is apparently an automatic fail as that poo poo is comparatively easy compared to what they're supposed to be doing
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May 3, 2014 00:35
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Atropine is also used in some surgeries to combat reduced heart rate from surgery and to reduce secretions to lessen drooling, etc
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May 3, 2014 01:05
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Actually I'm pretty sure said freind's current position as a post doc replaced a guy who blew up his lab making meth.
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May 3, 2014 01:10
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Hey scientifically-minded type people, I don't know if this is a good question for this thread or not, but it seems to be the closest we've got to a science/chemistry thread haunted by people who know what the hell they are talking about, so I may as well try asking this here. So I recently heard about the concept of the 'island of stability' in very heavy elements, and the idea that it could be possible to create trans-Uranium elements with much more stable nuclei and half-lives perhaps even on the order of millions of years. So I guess my question is, say scientists manage to bash enough heavy nuclei together to create Goonium-300 or something, and it's as stable as Lead. Is it even feasible to create enough atoms to study the actual chemistry of it? Let alone creating enough atoms to physically observe it on a macroscopic level. For that matter, is it even possible to do chemistry on the very heavy, very-short-lived elements? We can guess where they would be on the Periodic Table, but how would we know they'd slot in nicely beside the Actinides?
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May 3, 2014 05:00
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