A Taste for Poison Quotes

“Rather than throw the white arsenic away, it was realised that money could be made by selling the substance as a poison to get rid of all kinds of vermin, including cockroaches, rats, stray animals - as well as relatives and secret lovers.”
― Neil Bradbury, A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them

“Sometimes what makes things toxic is exactly what allows them to be used for good.”
― Neil Bradbury, A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them

“Knowing that you are unlikely to be bitten by bedbugs as the wallpaper is slowly killing you is not the calm relaxed feeling most people want from their bedrooms”
― Neil Bradbury, A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them

“Searching through a library of 16,480 different chemical compounds, two were found to protect mice from a lethal dose of ricin. More research is needed before these compounds can be made into drugs for humans, but it is possible that these drugs may also prove useful against other virulent toxins, such as Shiga toxin, that enter the cell in a similar way to ricin. While the name Shiga toxin may not be familiar, the bug that makes it and the effects of the toxin are well known. Shiga toxin is made by certain strains of E. coli, and causes severe, often bloody, diarrhea, and is the reason for so many E. coli–related food recalls.”
― Neil Bradbury, A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them

“In 2016 a clinical study was performed using antibodies that were designed to be attracted to cancerous cells in the bladder. As the antibodies bound specifically to the cancer cells, they took along the ricin A chain. Like a Trojan horse, the cancer let the antibody-ricin complex inside its cells, where the ricin went on to kill the tumor. The realization of Ehrlich’s magic bullet now seems a real possibility. Thus cutting-edge therapeutic uses of ricin would seem to rehabilitate the reputation of even the deadliest of substances.”
― Neil Bradbury, A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them