Oh. My. God. There are explosives in our medicine cabinets!

[Liberal Veteran]

Nitroglycerin (NG), (US spelling) also known as nitroglycerine, (UK Spelling), trinitroglycerin, trinitroglycerine, 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane and glyceryl trinitrate, is a heavy, colorless, oily, explosive liquid obtained by nitrating glycerol. Since the 1860s, it has been used as an active ingredient in the manufacture of explosives, specifically dynamite, and as such is employed in the construction and demolition industries. Similarly, since the 1880s, it has been used by the military as an active ingredient, and a gellatinizer for nitrocellulose, in some solid propellants, such as Cordite and Ballistite. Nitroglycerin is also used medically as a vasodilator to treat heart conditions, such as angina and chronic heart failure.

This is just horrible! Why do they continue to try to poison us?

[varkam]

1. Throw out your heart pills! They could blow up and kill you!

It's sad that I think this might be needed: :sarcasm:

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Many people carry nitro with them at all times....stops angina pain and heart attacks.

[Liberal Veteran]

7. Obviously they have been bamboozled by big pharma into thinking explosives will help.

:D

[beam me up scottie]

8. Well, they will help.

They draw attention to the victim!

[Richard D]

3. Hehehe

I got stopped going through airport security once because a routine swab of my computer revealed nitro on it. Turned out that a friend had used it a few days before to check her email, and her husband was a regular user of a nitro patch.

[Warpy]

4. It is theoretically possible to detonate nitroglycerine paste

between the paddles of a defibrillator. We were all saving that one for a night when we were really, really bored.

It's only a 3% paste, so we'd likely just get a curl of smoke and a little popping, but the possibility always intrigued us.

Now I'm waiting for the people who are going to tell us that the tablet held under the tongue is dangerous because of the possibility of detonation via saliva and dental work.

[hvn_nbr_2]

19. Just don't bite down on your nitro if you have braces

Oh, yeah, don't carry it in the same pocket as your Boy Scout flint 'n' steel either.

Lest anyone misunderstand: :silly:

[aquart]

5. So? Meanwhile I need a passport to buy Sudafed.

[beam me up scottie]

6. Tell me about it.

It's easier to get OxyContin.

[PVnRT]

9. Try getting insulin needles sometime

[aquart]

10. Needles were prescription. Easy. No passport needed.

Sudafed? A whole other story. Non-prescription. Obtainable only with a drivers license or a valid passport. Neither of which I have.

I do, however, have a stuffed nose!

[tburnsten]

11. I really don't think it is poison

I am not so convinced that just because a substance happens to be an explosive means it is a poison or that it is not a great medical tool. When was the last time you read about someone being injured because their angina medicine exploded or a heart attack intervention going horribly wrong because the patient blew up when they gave him/her the meds?

I think you should relax a bit. Might save you from needing nitroglycerine yourself.

[varkam]

12. The OP was being sarcastic. eom

[tburnsten]

14. Oh my N/T

[varkam]

15. :)

It happens to the best of us. It can be difficult to discern tone through the intertubes.

[Liberal Veteran]

13. This is what happens when you forget to use the sarcasm smiley.

I was being aggressively facetious to point out how ridiculous some of the anti-western medicine sentiment is in this group.

Obviously, like my rat poison thread and this one, I have an inherent understanding that chemicals can have multiple uses that seem very far removed from one another (such as nitrates having beneficial uses as medicine and destructive uses as an explosive). Or hell, botulinum toxin which is one of the most poisonous naturally occurring substances on earth which is used in medicine in very minute doses to treat painful muscle spasms and injected as a cosmetic treatment as Botox, but a few hundred grams of it could kill every single human on the planet.

So you get bullshit from fear mongers with the medical and biochemical aptitude of Anna Nicole Smith essentially warning people of the "dangers" of something because a) "big evil pharma" is involved. b) they read about something on a website or c) they have some kind of agenda (or any combination thereof). They routinely take things out of context and proportion and display an appalling lack of reasoning skills to tell us vaccines or medicines are bad because they may or may not contain a formulation, dosage, or combination that they associate with a known negative effect in OTHER formulations and dosages.

Most of the fear mongering with regards to medicine is reminiscent of the kinds of arguments you get when trying to have a scientific discussion with a creationist. You can only get so far. The arguments sound compelling (boric acid! aluminum! rat poison! explosives!) until you apply scientific theory to them and realize that dressing up an argument in the psuedoscientific babble does not make for good science --- although it makes for fantastically entertaining discourse on message boards.

[tburnsten]

16. What happens when I don't spend any time here

I miss out on the nuances. That actually sounds sort of similiar to many of the debates over in the guns forum.

I will have to spend more time in here, it looks like a neat place.

Expand my horizons some.

[varkam]

17. Stay away!

Run whilst you still can!

[dropkickpa]

18. And take this magic foot pad

To protect you from the toxins!

[Liberal Veteran]

21. You taunt Kinoki foot pads at your own peril!

How else are you going to get rid of all those poisons that evul pharma is giving you?

[varkam]

22. They're Ancient! And Japanese! Or Chinese! Or something!

And they have pretty commercials!

[Liberal Veteran]

23. Yeah, except for the part of the commercial where they show you how toxic that woman is.

[dropkickpa]

24. They're asian!

They must be magic!

[benEzra]

20. My bathroom is heavily contaminated with dihydrogen monoxide.

I am really scared about it, but the nice man said that for $500, he could transform it all into hydrogen hydroxide and it would all be OK.

Oh, and wrapping your nitro pills in tinfoil will keep the government from detonating them remotely using HAARP.

:dunce: :D

[xchrom]

25. kick