Brigham Young professor told not to give fake urine to his students to drink

Could be worse. An acquaintance once decided that his tequila supply was too meager. So he and friends cut it 50-50 with Listerine before drinking. Questionable but understandable logic.

They all promptly vomited.

3 Likes

I am not convinced the Listerine was the problem there.

1 Like

Professor:
“Who wants to participate in an experiment?”

Students:
“I’m in.”
“I’m in.”
“I’m in.”
“Urine??”

8 Likes

My brain told me this was “psychology” instead of “physiology” and the idea of offering someone fake urine to drink almost made sense. I really can’t imagine how the fake urine helped with a demonstration of dehydration.

I mean, unless he had been keeping that student in a sealed box for a few days and the lesson was that after three days of dehydration you’d drink urine out of desperation. In which case, I agree that offering students fake urine is a problem.

1 Like

Agreed. It’ll be one of mankind’s unsolved mysteries until someone decides they want to win an Ignoble award and find out.

1 Like

…or a Darwin award.

You will find that story in the pages of Penn and Teller’s How to Play with Your Food. Those of a certain age might recall a CGI Listerine bottle being animated to swing through the jungle and the like.

The setup was that they started talking with the execs about chemicals that got added to prevent alcoholics from drinking the bottle and one animator bet another to drink the bottle and, well, they had a good time. After the vomiting, I imagine.

You’re right! I couldn’t remember where I saw it! Arigatou!

1 Like

Honestly, if the lecturer is asking for volunteers and gives them opportunity to back out, this seems like a way to make a lesson memorable.

I went to BYU for four years and no one ever offered me a shot of urine - genuine or imitation. They had a great orange whip in the student union food court though - the original, non-alcoholic variety like they used to have at the Disney parks.

2 Likes

That sounds like a bad “health” drink.
I’m used to a recipe closer to this:

The day we were to do a urinalysis of our own samples in high school Biology (not for drugs, just normal analysis of pH and sugars and such,) I brought in a bottle of white grape juice, filled the sample cup from that in the bathroom, then drank it in front of the class.

They call it sophomoric humor for a good reason, y’know.

1 Like

A physiology class I took when I was pre-med did this, too.

The professor had been concocting various fake “urines” for years to indicate how smell, color, and yes, taste, can indicate certain maladies.

Doctors apparently used these types of tests prior to the 20th century (I think it was also featured in an episode of House with guest star Mira Sorvino).

My professor would invite students to smell and taste some of the samples, not indicating they were fake until after the volunteers subjected themselves to the grossness. Of course, since he’d been doing this for years, everyone knew it was fake. Then again, there was always the chance that this year…

Still, I think this might be more “outrage” than outrage. We didn’t really have vastly proliferated social media and smart phones in the early 2000s, but somehow everyone was aware the shtick, so I’m a little skeptical that in 2015/16 this wasn’t more well known.

2 Likes

Riiiiiight!

See, I was trying to figure out what the hell the fake urine was for, but this makes total sense. If you have a cup and say, “If urine smells like this, then…” then there is really a point to having the fake urine.

Of course if you do it without the food colouring you still get to expose people to the smell but you don’t give them the ick factor. Then again, if they are actually studying to become doctors, maybe getting used to regarding other people’s urine as a fact of life is worthwhile? As a parent, I got over the “grossness” of human excrement pretty quick.

1 Like

Those crazy Mormons!

You need the color too:

  • is it red from beets, or blood?
  • is it dark from temporary dehydration or kidney failure?
  • does the intensity of color match the smell?

etc.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.