Have you ever noticed?

[Zolar V]

Have you ever noticed that a natural substance, such as venom or toxins, seem to have a benefitial use for humans?

 

for instance a poision derived from a bacteria is good at killing other bacteria, IE Pennescillin.

[insane_alien]

lot of people have noticed it.

 

the only reason it works is because your bigger than the things you want to kill, so it kills them before it'll kill you.(although penicillin would kill me first, i'm highly allergic to it)

[Zolar V]

lot of people have noticed it.

 

the only reason it works is because your bigger than the things you want to kill, so it kills them before it'll kill you.(although penicillin would kill me first, i'm highly allergic to it)

 

so, if we were to find a poisonous whale, Its poison would be of no benefit to us?

[insane_alien]

huh?

 

i don't think you get what i said at all. when we use poisons to help us it usually involves killing something that has infected us. such as microbes nad parasites.

 

the only reason these poisons work in this regard is that it takes a much lower dose to kill the invader than the host(us).

 

as whales do not, to my knowledge, enter our body(at all) and cause disease then why would we need to kill them off when they're infesting us?

 

as to whether the poison is useful to us or not depends on the actual poison itself. there are many that have bugger all beneficial effects.

 

i suspect that your view on this is skewed by the reporting, its reported on far more often about ones that do have beneficial effects than those that don't.

 

this occurs for a variety of reasons including,

-the ones that are useful are well, useful, hence worthy of report

-the ones that are useful may be surprising(particularly important in newspapers)

-the ones that aren't useful aren't really special in any way.

[Sisyphus]

Everything is poison in a sufficiently large dose, and nothing is poison in a sufficiently small dose. Drinking too much water can kill you. A few molecules of cyanide won't hurt you. So there's really no such thing as a "poisonous" substance. Just substances that are harmful at relatively low doses. (And, of course, there are organisms that evolve the ability to produce certain substances specifically because they are harmful to others in small doses.)

 

That said, most things we use as medicine are harmful to us. They're just less harmful than the ailments they treat. Penicilin is not good for you. It's bad for you. However, it is less bad for you than the bacterial infections that you use it to treat.

[Zolar V]

Ah, i see what your saying. I think i misread your post.

Your points still hold valid, however, being that we do not really hear about any types of poisons that arn't beneficial.

[Horza2002]

You should also consider how those molecules are toxic to the organism your trying to kill.

 

Penicillin is toxic to microorganisms by inhibiting the synthesis of their cell walls which are essential to there survival. Human cells, however, do not posses these cell walls and so penicillin is not toxic to humans (unless your allergic to it like insane_alien).

 

Carbon monoxide is toxic (as im sure everone knows) as it binds very strongly to iron in haemoglobin. However, humans generate around 3ml of CO a day via the degredation of heme groups. Again, it depends on quanitity!

[Mr Skeptic]

Have you ever noticed that a natural substance, such as venom or toxins, seem to have a benefitial use for humans?

 

Sure, lots of stuff is useful whether natural or not. Naturally produced chemicals often have some sort of specific effect on living organisms, such as toxins against certain types of critters. When one toxin is far more toxic to one type of creature than to ourselves, we frequently use it to poison them with little harm to ourselves -- hence herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics. Even things that are very highly toxic to ourselves can be useful, either in warfare or for painkillers, or to paralyze specific muscles for cosmetic effect (botox).

 

Other natural substances like coal, iron, gold, wood, etc also have more mundane uses.

 

for instance a poision derived from a bacteria is good at killing other bacteria, IE Pennescillin.

 

Yes; and that is also what the original organism uses it for: to compete with other bacteria.