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dipsydoodle

(42,239 posts)
Fri Oct 18, 2013, 08:55 AM Oct 2013

The drugs derived from deadly poisons.

It is the most poisonous substance known to man. A couple of teaspoons would be enough to kill everyone in the UK. A couple of kilos would kill every human on earth. It is so dangerous that it is manufactured in military installations and at around £100 trillion per kilo it is also the most expensive substance ever made. Yet despite being so toxic and so costly it is in huge demand. Many people pay large amounts of money to have it injected into their foreheads.

It is botulinum toxin - better known as Botox - a toxin produced by bacteria first discovered in poorly prepared sausages during the 18th Century. It was named after the Latin for sausage - botulus.

On the LD50 toxicity scale, which measures how much of a substance you would need to kill half the people it is given to, Botox measures just 0.000001 mg/kg. In other words you need would need around 0.00007mg to kill a 70kg man like me. Or to put it another way, a lethal dose for me would weigh less than one cubic millimetre of air.

Botulinum toxin kills its victims by causing respiratory failure. It is a neurotoxin - it enters nerves and destroys vital proteins. This stops communication between nerves and muscles. Only the growth of new nerve endings can restore muscle function, and that can take months.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24551945

And yet some persist in making themselves look like

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