[ExI] wheelchair driving drunk

[Gregory Lewis]

I'm a doctor. Pretty sure none of this is being contemplated by the 
medical profession, primarily because of the medical norm that 
nicotine/alcohol/etc. are bad things, and not the things one prescribes 
to one's patients. Also the related medical norm of the 
treatment/enhancement distinction: giving stuff to improve patients 
health is okay, as is stop disease negative effecting wellbeing - 
giving out drugs to make one feel happier is generally not deemed 
acceptable.

(There's also the generalized social fallout: "Evil nursing home drugs 
the elderly!" etc. etc.)

On 28 December 2013 20:15:08, spike wrote:
>> ... On Behalf Of spike
> Subject: Re: [ExI] wheelchair driving drunk
>
>> ... On Behalf Of spike
>
>> ...Imagine a memory care unit...Many of the patients cannot really walk
> safely, so they are in a wheelchair...  We could set up a kind of lead-lag
> mechanism which would know how much alcohol it delivered and how much
> water/alcohol mixture the patient devoured...spike
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Now that I think about it, there is no reason to stop at alcohol.  There are
> two other drugs which are legal, well-understood, cheap and makes most
> people feel better always, for a total of exactly three:  caffeine, nicotine
> and alcohol.  A feedback mechanism of some sort could introduce all three
> into a drinking-water stream.  The nursing home cannot allow patients to
> smoke; this isn't legal indoors in most states now, and in some states going
> out doors is not an option.  Even then, for severely impaired patients, the
> facility cannot assume the liability of their holding a burning cigarette
> and cannot afford the staff to help them smoke.  They can't really even
> allow them steaming hot coffee; the bad cases cannot handle cups.  So now,
> all those patients who enjoyed smoking, drinking and coffee all their lives
> are now mostly deprived of all three, and they haven't even done anything
> illegal.  Does this seem right to you?
>
> OK then, we can likely rig an alcohol delivery system complete with
> feedback.  With the nicotine and caffeine, it isn't clear how you would set
> up a feedback system, but we wouldn't need to do that: the system could know
> the weight of the patient and could deliver the other two feels-good
> chemicals at a pre-calculated concentration.  The system could monitor the
> amount of water delivered, without requiring the patients to hold a glass or
> cup, using a drinking tube vaguely analogous to that which is used for
> racecar drivers in the 500.  That way, measurement inaccuracies because of
> spillage wouldn't mess up the measurements.
>
> Alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, anything else we can add to a drinking water
> supply and deliver via a straw?  Vitamins?  Iron?  Calcium  fluoride?
> Aspirin?  I know how to get all the above examples into a concentrated
> water-soluble form which can be metered and added to a drinking water
> stream.
>
> Doctors among us, is anyone working on stuff like this?  Why not?  Rafal, do
> you have any buddies who specialize in geriatrics who might want to be an
> amateur inventor, or work with one?
>
> spike
>
>
>
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