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.
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I am not convinced the Listerine was the problem there.
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Professor:
âWho wants to participate in an experiment?â
Students:
âIâm in.â
âIâm in.â
âIâm in.â
âUrine??â
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My brain told me this was âpsychologyâ instead of âphysiologyâ and the idea of offering someone fake urine to drink almost made sense. I really canât 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 youâd drink urine out of desperation. In which case, I agree that offering students fake urine is a problem.
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Agreed. Itâll be one of mankindâs unsolved mysteries until someone decides they want to win an Ignoble award and find out.
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âŚor a Darwin award.
You will find that story in the pages of Penn and Tellerâs 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.
Youâre right! I couldnât remember where I saw it! Arigatou!
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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.
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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, yâknow.
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A physiology class I took when I was pre-med did this, too.
The professor had been concocting various fake âurinesâ 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 heâd been doing this for years, everyone knew it was fake. Then again, there was always the chance that this yearâŚ
Still, I think this might be more âoutrageâ than outrage. We didnât really have vastly proliferated social media and smart phones in the early 2000s, but somehow everyone was aware the shtick, so Iâm a little skeptical that in 2015/16 this wasnât more well known.
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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, âIf urine smells like this, thenâŚâ 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 donât give them the ick factor. Then again, if they are actually studying to become doctors, maybe getting used to regarding other peopleâs urine as a fact of life is worthwhile? As a parent, I got over the âgrossnessâ of human excrement pretty quick.
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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.
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