Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium?

Re:Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? by rectangletangle on Saturday September 13, 2014 @11:17PM (#8314415)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_(medication)#Side_effec... The dosages required to achieve "beneficial" psychoactive effects will probably result in adverse side effects in a significant portion of the population. Lithium should be prescribed by a doctor on a case by case basis, not indiscriminately dumped into the water supply.

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Re:Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? by learc83 on Saturday September 13, 2014 @11:21PM (#8314421)

The article was talking about trace amounts, very far below the therapeutic dosages that cause those side effects.

Trace amounts of lithium already occur naturally in many municipal water supplies.

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Re:Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? by rectangletangle on Saturday September 13, 2014 @11:29PM (#8314438)

The dose makes the poison, the higher PPM of lithium, the larger the percentage of individuals that will be affected. Even if it affects a tiny fraction of the population at the proposed concentrations, it's still unfair to that demographic. Would you wan't to have to buy special non-lithium supplemented water?

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Re:Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? by RichardFord on Saturday September 13, 2014 @11:26PM (#8314431)

Yeah, she was way too gung-ho about potentially forcing this stuff on people via the water supply. But I'm not surprised that an academic would want to social-engineer this way.

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