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The Medical Benefits of Carbon Monoxide
tugfoigel writes with this excerpt from the Boston Globe:
"For more than a century, carbon monoxide has been known as a deadly toxin. In an 1839 story, Edgar Allan Poe wrote of 'miraculous lustre of the eye' and 'nervous agitation' in what some believe are descriptions of carbon monoxide poisoning, and today, cigarette cartons warn of its health dangers. But a growing body of research, much of it by local scientists, is revealing a paradox: the gas often called a silent killer could also be a medical treatment. It seems like a radical contradiction, but animal studies show that in small, extremely controlled doses the gas has benefits in everything from infections to organ transplantation."
NO!
Something that is bad for us in high doses may be beneficial in low doses?! Next they'll be telling us that exposure to radiation and toxins can help cure cancer, or that the same stuff that rusts away unprotected steel and iron is actually necessary for animal life!
In Soviet Russia, carbon monoxidizes you....
Almost anything is lethal in large doses, and many things are fatal in even small doses. Those same things are often of some benefit in very small doses. For instance, Botulinum toxin. We use small and weakened versions of virus to immunize ourselves. Most medicines can kill children who ingest a moderate overdose. A little alcohol can be antiseptic, which is why many places in the world used to drink with their food, but too much alcohol is lethal.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Paracelsus, sometimes called the father of toxicology, wrote:
German: Alle Ding' sind Gift, und nichts ohn' Gift; allein die Dosis macht, daß ein Ding kein Gift ist.
"All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."
That is to say, substances often considered toxic can be benign or beneficial in small doses, and conversely an ordinarily benign substance can be deadly if over-consumed. Even water can be deadly if overconsumed.
(Ripped right from Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus ] )
So, 500 years ago, this would have been news?
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
Can cigarettes be good for you in small doses then?
...coadminister with tetraethyl lead.
Take that you health freaks! I chainsmoke like a chimney, so enjoy your tofu and cancer!!
or tylenol, botulinum toxin, carboplatin, warfarin and many others. Just because a chemical is deadly toxic at some level doesn't mean it can't be useful at lower concentrations.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I wonder how this gels with the research into the dangers of giving oxygen when resuscitating people from death. I have a feeling we'll be seeing the new standard procedure in what gasses to give change radically over the next few years. HEX
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Would not be the only beneficial peak around.
Take iron, for instance. It's an essential trace mineral but drop an anvil on your foot and you're in a world of hurt...
This ain't rocket surgery.
Have their medicinal values. Most medicines become poisonous at a certain level too, so there is some symmetry to it all.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As any toxicologist will tell you: Dosage is everything.
From TFA:
But given the deeply entrenched fear of carbon monoxide as a toxin, he said it is unlikely that the gas would be directly given as a therapy to many people. Instead, research into the mechanism by which carbon monoxide works could allow scientists to design a drug that could act in the same way.
REALLY? Because CO has a scary reputation we'd rather give patients a new expensive patented drug that we think works just like CO rather than just give them a well controlled dose of a well understood, inexpensive, and easily available gas?
No wonder nobody can afford health care.
Radiation is generally bad for you, but we use it as a medical treatment.
Pick your favorite medical prescription, now eat 10 lbs of it. Oh look it's bad for you.
Congress & the prez are talking about bad incentives in the health care system. IMO this is one of the most obvious wrong incentives: the fact that there is no research into and marketing for cheap, widely available remedies, because you can't get a government-sponsored monopoly on them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lYN_lXU9PA&feature=PlayList&p=557A85F6897EC8FC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6
this video seems off topic but he does make an insightful comment about Hydrogen Sulfide being used with cold to slow down metabolism.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
A lot of you here are to young to remember the big boat station wagons that parents would pile full of stuff and kids and head off to places like Yellowstone and the like. Many of these had rear facing seats and power rear windows. The only problem was that if you let the window down a little, the car exhaust would be sucked into the car, especially near the rear facing seats where the kids were. Now many would think this is a problem, but parents of that day, after having to listen to the little brats giggling, and yelling would crack that rear window and let a little CO in to quiet the kids down. It worked, they went to sleep, and the only drawback was a few points off the ACT scores later in High School.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
One of the final breakdown products of hemoglobin is carbon monoxide, which we produce constantly since red blood cells only live a few days and after they die, their contents are cut up to recover the iron. We only produce one molecule of CO per hemoglobin, so it's very tiny overall quantities. But, since we make it, it's not too surprising that our systems have optimized to cope with it in those same small quantities. The other main constituent of the broken-down porphyrin ring, bilirubin, is what makes feces brown.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Does this mean I should be cuckoo for CO CO puffs?
Sorry, but this risk analysis just doesn't work out when put in numbers. The number of annual deaths attributed to smoking far outweighs the number of deaths in traffic.
And, again, you're comparing an activity with only sporadic useful purpose with an activity that has a predominantly useful purpose (i.e. people being able to go from A to B). In fact, no modern economy can exist without the latter.
But, okay, you can say: it's their choice, right? No, it's not. If they are hooked on a substance that's designed to be addictive, then they no longer have choice. Most smokers I've known actually want to quit, but they can't. Secondly, what choice do their children have? Why should one not care about the health of a fellow human being?
As we've seen in recent years: even something as "simple" as smoking ban in certain public places has resulted in measurable health benefits in the overall population. This translates into economic advantages, which is to everyone's benefit.
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It doesn't surprise me. Whilst many substances are unsafe at any dosage (e.g. mercury), some things are downright deadly in large quantities.
Like Paracetamol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_toxicity Apparently, it's one of the worst ways to die.
And warafin, an excellent anti-blood clotting agent is also used as rat poison.