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by moi2388 272 days ago
Yeah, I don’t understand how this study was deemed ethical, let alone win.
3 comments

Because Teflon is harmless to the human body. It is inert. It interacts with nothing. We literally make replacement body parts out of it.

This is a case where conventional wisdom on HN is wildly out of sync with actual science.

Just because it's inert doesn't mean it's harmless. I'm pretty sure that if you shove a wad of it in your windpipe, you won't last very long. Also go check out water poisoning.
Yes, just like you can die if you choke on food.
Drink a pint of it then?
It's a solid.
I was curious about this study as well, both because the idea seems genius and wildly unsafe. I mean, I know teflon is inert, but really safe for consumption in quantities required for satiation? I googled the paper's title, and here it is: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26810925/

The answer is that it's a study in rats, seemingly (from the abstract) a very successful one. Probably a bad idea to introduce that amount of "forever chemicals" into the environment, but the central idea seems pretty sound.

Isn't PFAS, created by the production of teflon, the real issue?