

Bioethicist proposes adding lithium to US drinking water - Alex3917
http://bigthink.com/ideas/21538

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hugh3
Seems more like professional-grade trolling than a serious suggestion.

Still, on the offchance they do start doing it, I'll be first in line for
rainwater tanks, so I can protect the purity of my precious bodily fluids.

~~~
narrator
Bioethics attracts all the weirdos who want to propose really off the wall
crazy crap, like drugging the water supply, and call it "ethics".

Let's take a look at the Table of Contents of the Journal of Bioethics shall
we (<http://www.bioethics.net/journal/>)

* Should Human Beings Have Sex? Sexual Dimorphism and Human Enhancement

* The Risks of “Sexual Normalcy”

* Humans Should Be Free of All Biological Limitations Including Sex

* Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Human Dignity and Transhumanism: Do Anthro-Technological Devices [nonbiological entities introduced into or attached to the human body] Have Moral Status?”

The whole discipline of bioethics is basically about trolling... or they're
serious :/.

~~~
palish
Haha. That is amazing.

I thought "Bioethics attracts all the weirdos who want to propose really off
the wall crazy crap" until I read that list. People actually get paid to write
stuff like that?

~~~
gaius
An anything-ethicist is someone who failed in that field but still thinks they
ought to get a say in what gets funded. Ignore them.

~~~
EliRivers
I can't build (for example) a doomsday device that will eliminate all life on
Earth. I still think I should be allowed to disagree with the building of one.

~~~
EliRivers
Alright, let's ignore research because it complicates the matter. Correct
doomsday device scenario to "I've never carried out genocide, but I still
think I should be able to disagree with it."

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nphase
"One person's right to drink lithium-free water is no greater than another's
right to drink lithium-enhanced water."

Um... If you feel this strongly about it, then go put lithium in your water.
Don't make me buy bottled water. I've been on lithium before. I'd prefer to
spend the rest of my life as far away from ingesting it as possible.

~~~
nphase
Also, I highly doubt anyone has done a study on what tiny amounts of lithium
ingested regularly would do to your kidneys. There is a reason your doctor
wants you to get semi-regular kidney function tests if you're on lithium.

~~~
astrange
I would expect someone has done a study.

<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=renal+lithium+therapy>

~~~
nphase
These seem to be for normal doses, not tiny ones as the article suggests

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JacobAldridge
I must admit, I railed against adding Flouride for many years, mostly from a
liberty / choice perspective, before finally accepting almost a century of
scientific evidence and becoming a supporter. I need to know more about the
science, both positive and negative effects, before doing the same here, but
it is a nifty precendent.

As with fluoride, I wouldn't want my community to be the first to test it -
perhaps if I can convince my neighbours to support a local nuclear power plant
we would be spared being guinea pigs on the lithium issue.

~~~
angusgr
_I wouldn't want my community to be the first to test it_

At the levels they are talking about, it seems like there are communities who
for decades or longer have been "testing" drinking water with the proposed
levels of lithium.

Of course, that's assuming that the deliberately introduced lithium is in the
same form, with the same chemical availability. I would hope that would be a
requirement if anyone actually decided to try and do this.

~~~
JacobAldridge
True. I know we had issues where I am (Brisbane, Australia) when fluoride was
introduced. There was a lot of trial and error in ensuring the right amount
made it into the water supply (not too little or too much), although the
errors made (that we found out about at least) were all well within 'safe'
levels.

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KevinMS
Maybe they should check, or already have, if small doses of lithium make
citizens more compliant and less critical of authority, especially with
increasing the dosage of lithium in the water :)

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_delirium
This certainly does seem like a step above anything that's been done before.
Fluoride is intended to be basically inert as far as ingestion goes--- its
purpose is to improve tooth strength, but not to have any medically noticeable
internal effects when the water's drunk. Adding a substance that _is_
medically active when internally ingested as a default drinking-water option
would be quite a step. At the very least, we might want to get a lot better
handle on what the possible downsides are. There are these studies showing a
good preventative association with suicides, but does increasing lithium
intake do anything negative? It would be surprising if it had _no_ possible
negative effects, so the question is more what they are and how likely/serious
they are.

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adulau
The toxicity of lithium is a reality. To monitor the level of toxicity you
need to check the concentration level in the blood. If you start to distribute
lithium in water, how can you ensure that the level of lithium remains below
toxicity in the blood of each water drinker (even if you control the
concentration as you don't control the quantity of water used by everyone)?
Lithium is often a salt and what will be the effect of the concentration when
cooking or taking a shower?

Even if lithium was added in 7up[1] before the fifties, it's not drinking
water and you don't take your bath with 7up or cook your potatoes with it...

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_pharmacology>

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euccastro
Regarding the success story provided as precedent: I don't know the quantities
involved, but if it is known that swallowing a toothpaste tube's worth of
fluoride can kill a child, I'm not comfortable with the idea of tainting the
drinking water with even "safe" amounts of this poison just so it will briefly
pass by your teeth in its way to your digestive tract. Sounds reckless and
extremely disrespectful to me.

<http://www.fluoridealert.org/toothpaste.html>

~~~
maxjg
So I think what you're trying to say is that it's an international Communist
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids?

~~~
narrator
Anytime anybody brings up fluoride somebody else brings up Dr. StrangeLove, it
might as well be a knock knock joke. I wish people would actually look into
the science. People thought DDT was unquestionably great too.

~~~
billswift
Banning DDT was one of the stupider things the government has done. The EPA
studies showed no reason for it; the first EPA administrator just up and did
it - against the professional scientists' recommendations. Rachel Carson's
_Silent Spring_ , which was the original "justification" for it was pure BS.

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jim_h
Ever see the movie 'Equilibrium'..?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_%28film%29>

I think we need to make changes to how we live our lives before we resort to
using drugs if we can avoid it. What's next? Dieting drugs in our water?

~~~
sliverstorm
It's not like this is an anti-obesity drug to fight poor life choices and life
styles. I really hope you don't feel that the majority of suicides were by
people who simply made 'poor life choices' and needed to change how they
lived.

And, even when the condition can be remedied by life changes, good or bad (is
moving to Seattle and suffering from depression deserving of criticism?)
doesn't it make sense to buy time by treating the major life threatening
symptoms, i.e. trying to kill yourself?

~~~
jim_h
What are the majority of suicides caused by? (I am actually curious.)

I'm merely saying that living a healthy, active and happy life would produce
good results and help to avoid needing to take drugs. Is that wrong? Naive?

~~~
Qz
Naive, yes.

~~~
jim_h
Well, you can't avoid all drugs, but you would agree that it would reduce the
ones you can actively avoid. Right?

Naive or not, I think an active healthy lifestyle is something that we should
all strive for. Work and hope for the best.

~~~
Qz
We should all strive for it, but the reality is that most people who don't
have an 'active healthy lifestyle' arrived at that condition before they were
adults. People who learn unhealthy habits in their childhood or adolescence
have a tremendously hard time breaking those habits or even recognizing that
they are unhealthy.

I speak as someone who, despite my parents best intentions, was not raised to
approach life in a 'healthy active' manner, and have only arrived at that
point after leaving my parents' well-meaning clutches.

So, the people who this would most help are generally not that way by choice
or even responsibility, so to talk of their right to not drink lithium water
seems off the mark. I'd love to give people the right not to have incapable
parents, because that would do a whole lot more for this cause than anything
else.

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ivancho
The bullshit is strong in this one. Look, I have 4 data points, 2 each in some
very psychotic societies. We are going to extrapolate to the entire world and
then try and add some psychoactive substances to their water. Seriously, I've
been near a couple of politicians - we can totally pull this off.

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prodigal_erik
This seems likely to bring a bunch of people to being almost but _not quite_
miserable and hopeless enough to commit suicide, without any plans to ever
rescue them from that state. To me that sounds more sadistic than helpful.

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exit
will the decline in suicide represent people who are no longer depressed, or
people who are slightly less depressed but constantly at the edge of
committing suicide?

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darushimo
Serenity?

~~~
wisty
More like Equilibrium, given the effects of lithium. Of course, we are talking
about _really_ small doses.

It does beg the question though. If small doses are effective, why do people
only get prescribed massively higher doses?

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biotech
I think the gp was referencing the movie "Serenity". Good movie :)

~~~
darushimo
yea i was, both title and storyline. :)

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fuzzythinker
Really, why is this on HN?

