Lots of people in history have died eating things that they didn’t know were dangerous, but how do we test new species of things now to determine if we can eat it or not?
In: Biology
1. Watch nature, are other animals eating this thing and not dying?
2. Break whatever it is apart and rub it on the underside of your arm. Observe for signs of rash
3. Rub on a lip or your tongue, any burning or spicy, oniony sensation or flavor? (avoid)
4. Might not die if you eat it …. but Im not going to say you will live either but thats what imagine the cavemen doing.
Monkey see monkey do is a popular saying. There is another about the red berry but basically means the same thing.
Everything is poisonous to a certain degree, but very few things are poisonous enough to kill in small quantities
are you talking about now or before science?
today, we know the chemical composition of just about everything, so it’s pretty much all been logged.
in the past, they could feed it animals and see what happens. quite a few people did learn the hard way probably.
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So today we have discovered pretty much everything you can eat on the planet in some form or another. So there’s not much left to discover if its poisonous.
If you are interested in drug design, I used to work in a lab that would contract to do toxicity testing.
We have a suite of tests that would determine if it interacted with various liver enzymes, heart transporters, how it binds to blood, etc. and we would report the results to the company that contracted us.
There are several enzymes and transporters that your drug cannot interact with at all or its a no-go. The FDA isn’t gonna let a drug that can stop your heart at the wrong dose anywhere near human trials.
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