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DUI Charges Dismissed Against Woman Whose Body Brews Alcohol (cnn.com)
HughPickens.com writes:
CNN reports that a judge dismissed DUI charges against a woman in upstate New York after being presented with evidence the woman suffers from "auto-brewery syndrome" even though she blew a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. "I had never heard of auto-brewery syndrome before this case," says attorney Joseph Marusak. "But I knew something was amiss when the hospital police took the woman to wanted to release her immediately because she wasn't exhibiting any symptoms." Also known as gut-fermentation syndrome, this rare medical condition can occur when abnormal amounts of gastrointestinal yeast convert common food carbohydrates into ethanol. The process is believed to take place in the small bowel, and is vastly different from the normal gut fermentation in the large bowel that gives our bodies energy.
If she has a condition that gives her a DUI, she shouldn't be driving, ever. Sucks for her but too bad.
Commercial potential for wino's tired of lining up for MD 20/20. Or for prisoners who can't readily get bottles - let your body do all the work! Maybe also as a supplement before a long posting in Saudi Arabia.
DUI means driving while under the influence of alcohol as measured by your blood alcohol content. It is alcohol in your blood that impairs your ability to drive. It doesn't matter how it got there. Whether you drink, take too much cough medicine, or have a medical condition that causes you to produce alcohol, it's still in your blood and impairing your ability to drive. Now, if it's a first offense, and the defendant didn't know they had the disease, I can see letting them off with a warning, but if the defendant knew about the condition then they have no business driving. Some medical conditions make it unsafe to drive. Blind people, for instance, can't drive. It sucks, but it happens.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I want that!
Because she blew a blood alcohol level of nearly 0.40, police procedure is to take the accused to a hospital, as that level is considered extremely life-threatening.
Why would medical professionals knowingly release a patient despite the knowledge she had life-threatening levels of alcohol in their body? Assuming they didn't diagnose her of the auto-brewery syndrome right away, you would think they would at least keep her overnight for observation.
This "auto-brewery syndrome" comes from overeating Twinkies, I suspect.
back in WWII. The patient was an enlisted man who would get falling down drunk after drinking milk. In his case, antibiotics cleared it up.
...that's gotta get me out of something
Table-ized A.I.
So what happened if he drank alcohol? Did he go moo or something?
Oops, I mentioned cows on slashdot.
Table-ized A.I.
Complain about SWAB, get a story about the poop chute instead.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, the milk acted like a smart drug for some reason. While drinking it regularly, he was considered out standing in his field.
I seem to remember reading about a family, that could turn sugar into alcohol right in their blood. They would also hypnotize possums into making a fire and roasting themselves. They were capable of other feats too, mostly motivated by laziness, of course. Can't find the author now, though...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Alcoholics build up a tolerance with their body masking physical symptoms. They learn to cover up the bigger tells and become consummate liars.
The point you're missing is that due to her condition being part of her all her life her natural blood alcohol level is well above 0.00 like the rest of us. So for her she's not impaired by what would make most of us puke our guts out and be in a coma, because her body naturally adapted to it.
>
Actually, 0.00 is not the actual natural blood alcohol level. Ethanol is produced as part of the sugar metabolism, so there is always a tiny concentration of alcohol in everyone's blood and just like with this woman, that level will vary over the day. The difference is in the magnitude.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
Being pissed all the time!
Hmm, on second thoughts, what is better? 1) to be pissed all the time, or 2) to have drinks every now and then?
Sadly, probably a sign of growing up, I now prefer intermittent drinking. I enjoy it as a contrast to my normal days.
When younger, I can remember being boozed for days. Really, the fun is in the first few hours, or perhaps evening. Less fun after that, exponential decay.
So, I feel sorry for her. Weird.
Exactly. Your presence on the road is itself considered "damages", much as with statutory damages for copyright infringement.
There is a huge problem with legal limits. The affects of alcohol are different for everyone. I've known grown men who could down a 40oz of Rye in an evening and still be standing, coherent and functional. I've also known average sized adult men that after 2 beers were slurring and drunk.
Alcohol affects everyone differently. The fact that her homeostasis is 4x the legal limit means her body has probably adapted to the constant presence of alcohol and she wouldn't have any of the symptoms of being drunk.
We need to find a better way to judge someone's ability to operate a vehicle other than the amount of chemicals in their blood.
This woman should not take the blame for a medical condition that she did not know about.
On the other hand, in the age of government-subsidized health care, the government might argue that she "reasonably should have known" about it since her annual physical. Perhaps this case might be the excuse to pass a law requiring blood alcohol screening in the standard set of annual tests that insurers in the state must cover.
But does this "tiny concentration of alcohol in everyone's blood" exceed 0.0050 percent (50 ppm)? If not, then it rounds down to 0.00.
If you don't like the law, get it changed
Would ways of doing so include suing employers for more bus-friendly hours on grounds that a requirement to drive would discriminate against her medical condition?
There is also a federal statute called the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities.
She had four drinks that afternoon. Granted that shouldn't make her falling down drunk, but she was drinking and she was impaired.
Driving Under the Influence means deciding to drive when you are impaired so why does it matter if she drank alcohol or drank some other liquid/food which turned to alcohol/etc to impair her judgement?
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Brewing is what people do to beer and coffee and perhaps other thing.
Her body makes alcohol. It is MAKING alcohol, not brewing beer, nor coffee or anything else.
Sig for hire.
Please reach for Hanlon's Razor more often. You don't have to be a neoprohibitionist to lower the limit; simply being dumb is good enough. Combine a little dumbness with personal experience and you can form a strong opinion.
I am as far from a prohibitionist as you can get. I love beer. The house is full of beer and every time I drive out of state, I buy beer (oooh, Interstate Commerce!) just to try out products offered by different distributors. The closets are stuffed with aging barleywines.
And yet, I also know that I am definitely impaired before 0.08%. From my subjective point of view, the 0.08% standard is absurdly high. No, I wouldn't be swerving around at that point, but my reactions would be terrible and my judgement .. altered. If I were stupid and also in charge of setting policy, my personal experience would have me set the limit to 0.04%.
Luckily for society, I'm not in charge. But also, I'm not quite stupid enough to fail to realize that different people have different reactions. Again: what I'm saying is that stupidity would be enough, with prohibitionist agenda having jack shit to do with anything.
So you merely have to ask: do we have stupid people in legislatures? ;-) Because if we do, then it's likely there's your true explanation.
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Is there such a thing as large and small bowel or are these just different words for large and small intestine? A brief googling seems to suggest the latter. The summary mentions a fermentation process in the large bowel that generates energy. My understanding is that the large intestine does little more than adjust the water content. Anyone know whats the truth here?
And yet, I also know that I am definitely impaired before 0.08%. From my subjective point of view, the 0.08% standard is absurdly high.
And yet I've blown .14 and passed the field sobriety tests (Wasn't driving!) so lets stop pretending that you have any clue what you're talking about, mmmmkay. .08 is two beers or less to most people who are fatasses, so unless you weigh 85 pounds or actually never drink beer, you're lying.
If you drink regularly (a beer or two every day) you'll also have somewhat of a tolerance until your liver/kidneys give out, at which point it'll be ugly for you, but thats another story.
The reality of it is, we have stupid legislatures because of people like you. You can hit 0.04 from swallowing too much mouth wash for fucks sake.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
In that case, maybe it is good that I am not a legal professional, because I would under virtually no circumstance follow or obey an unjust law. As a citizen, I believe it is even my duty to point them out to my peers and have them changed through the democratic process.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
Are you seriously arguing *for* government mandated [screenings for] a medical condition? Seriously?
I was more predicting that others will likely argue for it. Occasionally arguing positions that one does not favor keeps discussion from collapsing into an echo chamber.
Presumptions in law can be challenged by the introduction of facts to the contrary. Additionally a jury cannot be compelled to accept such a presumption (juries being the last defence of the common sense in the courtroom.) And speaking of law there is additionally case law. "A violation of this section is one offense, which may be proven in different ways. A person's breath alcohol concentration may be probative of impairment under subsection (1), as well as proof of a violation of this section based solely on breath alcohol concentration pursuant to subsection (3). State v. Kubik, 235 Neb. 612, 456 N.W.2d 487 (1990)" The text of the first section of the local DUI law reads "(a) While under the influence of alcoholic liquor or of any drug;" Gives good reason to believe the true meaning of the statute relates only to the influence of external substances.
Assuming the woman really has the condition she claims to have, driving on a flat may still be considered negligent or careless driving, and the condition itself may be grounds to revoke her drivers licences.
Who's ever heard of such a condition...oh, other than all the boomers who saw the sixties tv show about father and son lawyers in practice together, and the father defended a guy who had it. He got the judge's ok, and had him eating crackers in the courtroom, and proved, by the time he called him up, that he was drunk.
mark
The thing about lowering the BAC limit is that it's one of those things that sound good, like the TSA. If someone disbands the TSA, and an aircraft is hijacked or blown up, suddenly that someone is politically responsible for the incident (or maybe not, this tends to vary). If someone raises the BAC limit, and someone between the old and new level is in an accident that kills a girl or young woman with blond hair and blue eyes (I don't know why this is the political trigger), that's going to be bad for whoever raised it. Lowering the limit doesn't have the same comparable risk.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I will grant that your reading comprehension is shockingly below average, but if you were as stupid as you say you are, you wouldn't be able to communicate it so directly. Show, don't tell.
Your only refuge would have been satire, but when satire lacks humor or insight, the hopeful smiles turn to disappointed sighs. That's not even good craft. C'mon, man!
Here's how I would fix your post, to make it better. I am not an expert writer by any stretch of the imagination; I merely assert that I am your better. So learn:
Don't you see how that would have been a better way to say the exact same shit-for-brain nonsense that you said? This isn't even fancy and I'm sure you could do just as well, if you tried. But you didn't. So the question is: dude, what went wrong?
(*) This is a real place on my commute to work every day. It's awesome but in my fantasy, that same magic stretch of street would also have a 1970s style porn theater, a plasma donation center, a casino, and a sausage factory with a secret tunnel to a nearby funeral parlor. "Hey, why is the sausage factory always receiving shipments of sandbags? Their sausages don't taste like sand at all."
(**) tvtropes link included out of spite. I hope I just made your life shorter.
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