New Nail Polish Alerts Wearers To Date Rape Drugs

stephendavion writes Checking to see if your drink has been tampered with is about to get a whole lot more discreet. Thanks to the work of four North Carolina State University undergrads, you'll soon be able to find out without reaching for a testing tool. That's because you'll already have five of them on each hand. The team — Ankesh Madan, Stephen Gray, Tasso Von Windheim, and Tyler Confrey-Maloney — has come up with a creative and unobtrusive way to package chemicals that react when exposed to Rohypnol and GHB. They put it in nail polish that they're calling Undercover Colors.

Comments

In 14 years practising emergency medicine

[Anonymous Coward]

In 14 years practising emergency medicine, I've seen large numbers of young women who get drunk and come to A&E firmly believing that they've been given a "date rape drug," but when laboratory testing is used to confirm that belief I've only ever seen one actual case of drug-facilitated sexual assault. We live in a world with a lot less drug-facilitated date rape than fearmongering about date rape drugs.

Re:In 14 years practising emergency medicine

[Cardoor]

i think your sample set and conclusions might be seriously biased. i'm no expert on rape-statistics, but it's my understanding that a very significant amount of non-drug-assisted rapes go unreported by the victims for a variety of reasons.

it seems to me that under the circumstances where a woman 'comes to' and can't even remember what happened (not to mention probably still feeling mentally/emotionally impaired from the chemical hangover) there would be an even higher incidence of the rapes going unreported.

it may still be possible that drug-facilitated rape occurs with less frequency than feared, but i see no ability to reach that conclusion logically from your estimation.

Re:The world we live in.

[sribe]

I couldn't. Because there's something uniquely shitty about disabling and taking advantage of someone who's already going on a date with you. They went out of their way to spend time with you, and you just go "not good enough" and betray the hell out of them.

While that is uniquely shitty, it's not all that "date rape" drugs are used for. It's not at all uncommon for them to be used on strangers at a bar.

Re:As someone who went to NC State

[i kan reed]

From that page(bolding mine):

All INVENTIONS arising from (1) research conducted with University-administered funds, (2) work within the INVENTOR’S SCOPE OF EMPLOYMENT, or (3) the SUBSTANTIAL USE OF UNIVERSITY RESOURCES are owned by the University.

I guess the relevant thing is whether they used university facilities to develop their chemical. My guess is that they did.

Re: The world we live in.

[Kielistic]

Rape apologia on a tech site!? GASP

There was no rape apology there.

There's a huge difference between being slipped a mickey and being extremely intoxicated.

Which is why people are not allowing you to conflate the two. Some times alcohol hits you harder than you expect. A lot of women think this means they were roofied (because people like you tell them there's roofies around every corner).

Re: The world we live in.

[westlake]

if all rapes were reported, we may well see that men rape women no more often than women rape men

I don't think that is in any way very likely.

According to a 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in theed States have been raped. The actual number is likely higher, experts say, as incidents of sexual violence are severely underreported in the United States -- particularly among male victims.

Against his will: Female-on-male rape