Boffins invent miracle pill that counteracts effects of booze Biology boffins have turned their hand to something useful: a pill to stop you acting drunk no matter how many pints you put away. It's your mutinous immune system that gives you that sozzled feeling after a boozy session, scientists claim in a paper published today in the British Journal of Pharmacology. Conk out certain …
No, ugly won't be bred out of the gene pool - beautiful people will become more beautiful, and us ugly sods will get more and more ugly. And there are more ugly people around than beautiful people.
So I say to you beautiful people - if you don't want to be surrounded by more and more increasingly hideous people - act now - shag someone ugly today!
Once this stuff because well known and well researched enough, it might eventually become accepted. Especially if we can make it work reliably and quickly.
Start with applying it to addicts and overdosers, then gradually expand its use from there once we have a good handle on any side effects and risks associated with the meds.
I don't think the magic pill is really going to help addicts and overdosers. Addicts don't keep drinking to avoid the hangover, they're generally trying to escape something else, and you could still overdose, in fact maybe more so. This drug only stops the effect of the drug on the brain, your kidneys and liver will still have to sort out all the crap you've tipped down your throat.
Evolution gave us pain because the human body doesn't come with a user manual.
> Has there ever been one? I often enjoy a drink, but I've never enjoyed being drunk.
Yes, there is a very important reason to "be drunk".
It lets you know that if you don't let up then you will get alchohol poisoning and DIE.
Having some sort of adverse reaction ingesting a poison is not a bad thing really.
If you don't want to feel the effects or you need to operate machinery - don't drink alcohol - simples.
Some of us enjoy the feeling of having one or three over the eight occasionally.
A more useful path of study would be how to block the hangover - a morning after(the night before) pill.
Personally I would love to be able to knock back a "few" pints on a hot day or relish the taste subtleties in a succession of glasses of different single malts or good brandies without losing taste, mental function and the ability to get home on the bike safely to the damn side effects...
"Though a pill to let enjoy your favourite tipple without getting drunk appears to be a godsend"
You say godsend, I say complete waste of time. Getting pissed it the point is what makes it my favourite tipple. You think people drink stella because of the refreshing taste ?.
(the alcoholism bit is the godsend, but that was only mentioned in passing)
Ok, so it's 'accepted' and peer-reviewed, but not yet published. Fine. But also it doesn't seem to report any new results by the author. It's like a mini-review of some other paper (Wu et al 2011), along with other papers in the literature that comes to the conclusion. Is this normal in medical molecular biology?
Well the pill bit might be new but I remember the newspapers reporting an injectable drug that completely, but temporarily, reversed the effects of drunkeness more than 25 years ago. (Sufficiently pre-Internet that there's no chance of finding a link for you.)
When the injection wore off you went back to being drunk again! It was touted as being some sort of emergency cure: if you got pissed and left the baby behind somewhere then the police could sober you up sharpish and save the baby, or some such nonsense - you know what the press are like.
Anyway, no use for it then and so probably no use for it now.
/ Beer icon, obviously
There is also evidence to suggest that the cytokine response is involved in the 'glutamate storm' that occurs when large amounts of glutamate are released during a stroke or other neurological trauma, so this could conceivably also help prognosis in stroke patients, or in cases of head trauma such as concussion.
I'm newly teetotal (again, after a couple of weeks relapse) and now I don't get to feel smugly superior and blackmail people after all? The only amusement I'll have is hearing their livers exploding from time to time!
More seriously, if this were readily available it would be a good way to thin the naturally irresponsible from society (through their livers exploding) kinda like we do with cars for teenagers.
Wouldn't that mean there's a danger of some idjit* drinking, taking the pill, and not being too sloshed to stop drinking? Surely this pill doesn't counteract alcohol poisoning.
* Yeah, it'd be their own dang fault, and go into the darwin award category. It might have implications for bar owners in the states, unfortunately.
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