X-Message-Number: 8341
From: 
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 21:51:40 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Toxic Avenger

Charles Platt (# 8322) tells us that DMF, the purported active ingredient in
Virodene, the AIDS medication being tested by Mrs. Visser and her medical
associates, is 50% fatal when given orally to rodents in the amount of about
7 milliliters per kilogram of body weight, and roughly 5.5 ml/kg
peritoneally. 

Well, unless my creeping senility is now galloping, Charles was so anxious to
show Virodene is deadly that he didn't do his arithmetic. Let's look:

DMF is about as dense as water, so one milliliter is about one gram. For a
person weighing 70 kg or 154 lb, the 50% fatal dose, according to him, would
then be about 7 x 70 gm = 490 gm or roughly 17.5 ounces--WHICH IS MORE THAN A
POUND.....I don't know what Mrs. Visser's dose is, but I doubt her patients
wear one-pound patches. Face it, Charles: a pound of damn near anything,
swallowed or injected, will kill you (and not just half kill you).

Once more: I am not selling Virodene, and have no financial stake in it--but
I hope it works, for the sake of the patients and the Vissers.

Oh yes, Charles asks if I would wear a Virodene patch.  Certainly--if I were
dying of AIDS. 

Robert Ettinger   

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