Ordinary Substances, +Concentrated

Ordinary things, deadly-when-concentrated

See my original "Cancer Treatment](" (linked) Idea for the background. Basically, it proposes that a cancer lump might be treatable with an ordinary substance that is deadly to cells in pure form, but can be tolerated by cells when sufficiently diluted.

Ordinary (but pure) table salt, sodium chloride, was suggested in that Idea. Injected into the middle of a cancer, it should kill cells indiscriminatly (but mostly only cancer cells) until it becomes diluted enough, with ordinary body fluids being the dilutant.

For some reason I (and apparently no one else, in the annotations) didn't bother to think about other ordinary substances that might work the same way. So, here are three more:

1. Alcohol is long known for its ability to kill cells when in concentrated form. It is also well-known to be tolerated when diluted. Ordinary wine, for example, can become up to about 12% alcohol before it kills the bacteria that makes it. Therefore it seems reasonable that a small amount of 100% pure alcohol, injected into a cancer, should be quite deadly to the cells in its vicinity, but become tolerated by other cells as it becomes diluted.

2. Sugar is used as a preservative (jams, jellies, etc) since it is able to kill bacterial cells when sufficiently concentrated (high-enougn percentage). Note that there are multiple varieties of sugar (sucrose, dextrose, lactose, fructose, maltose, ect.), and testing should be done to find out which works best, but for now we can focus on sucrose, since that is the ordinary/common preservative. As with alcohol, a small but pure quantity of sugar, injected into a cancer, should be quite deadly to cells in its vicinity, but become tolerated (more! its FOOD!) by other cells as it becomes diluted.

3. Vinegar (a.k.a "acetic acid") is also widely used as a preservative (any of many "pickled" foods), which means that again it is a substance which is deadly to cells in concentrated form, but can be tolerated when sufficiently diluted. So again, injecting the pure stuff into a cancer should kill cells in its vicinity, but not kill other cells as it becomes diluted.

Alcohol and vinegar have an advantage over salt and sugar in that they are liquids, not solids. This makes them more injectable and may allow them to be used on otherwise-"inoperable" cancers, such as a brain tumor. That is, inserting a fine needle for injecting alcohol will do less damage to healthy tissue than drilling a big hole to add salt.

Finally, just as ordinary cancer treatments tend to use multiple drugs, there is no reason not to consider using the substances suggested here in combination or in sequence.

IF any of them actually work as Theory suggests, of course!

by Vernon Nemitz