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.