Leave it to Vox to write an article about psychiatrists wanting to spike Americans’ drinking water with Lithium.
Sure, things are crazy but drugging the masses? Yeah … no.
Some psychiatrists believe we could save tens of thousands of lives a year with a very simple, low-cost intervention: putting small amounts of lithium into our drinking water, the way we put fluoride in to protect our teeth. https://t.co/TuFpAr9lGy
— Vox (@voxdotcom) October 25, 2018
From Vox:
“In general, in the United States, lithium levels are much higher in the Northeast and East Coast and very low in the Mountain West,” he told me on a new episode of the Vox podcast Future Perfect. “And suicide rates track that exactly — much lower suicide rates in the Northeast, and the highest rates of suicide are in the Mountain West.”
Wait, what now?
If you apply that 50 to 60 percent reduction to the US, where about 45,000 people total died by suicide in 2016, you get a total number of lives saved at around 22,500 to 27,000 a year. That’s likely too high since you can’t reduce suicide rates in places that are already high-lithium. Ghaemi’s own back-of-the-envelope calculation is that we’d save 15,000 to 25,000.
Ghaemi and a number of other eminent psychiatrists are making a pretty remarkable claim. They think we could save tens of thousands of lives a year with a very simple, low-cost intervention: putting small amounts of lithium, amounts likely too small to have significant side effects, into our drinking water, the way we put fluoride in to protect our teeth.
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Sure, let’s put a psychiatric med in drinking water … why not?
You know that face you make when someone in your family eats the last Twinkie and they put the empty box BACK in the pantry? Yup, just made that face.
Let's start by adding it to the water of Vox employees, and see how it works, as a test case. https://t.co/xHrVuTh0IN
— Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D., M.S. (@Neoavatara) October 25, 2018
HAAAAAA.
"I'm a leaf on the win-" https://t.co/zuFW1SINgo
— Cuffy (@CuffyMeh) October 25, 2018
I don’t want to take lithium if I don’t need it, thanks. https://t.co/sK5Cw7ZvNR
— RBe (@RBPundit) October 25, 2018
JFC Vox… https://t.co/kt3fmpAZ6Q
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) October 25, 2018
Took the words right outta our mouths.
And then they lost their license to practice. The end.
— Adam Trahan (@AdamTrahan) October 25, 2018
This is f*+#ing insane. Vox is the literal worst
— Aubrey Bear (@NotReallyABear2) October 25, 2018
Word.
Even for Vox, this is pretty bad.
— Lucas Olson (@Lucas_A_Olson) October 25, 2018
Word again.
Wtf is wrong with you people?
— Freedom Recon (@FreedomRecon) October 25, 2018
How long ya’ got?
Absolutely not. Lithium is only to be used as a pill for bipolar disorder or such disorders as needed. It’s like taking an antidepressant when not needed. It can alter the physiological makeup of the brain in ways that one can’t recover from. Don’t take pills or
— ? Zelda(ween) ? (@ZeldaAGabriel) October 25, 2018
I hear it's great for Trump Derangement Syndrome…https://t.co/XH8PdcVOLj
— BonkPolitics (@BonkPolitics) October 25, 2018
Well in that case …
JUST KIDDING. (sorta)
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