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Comment by MandieD | Hacker News Reader

Your relative’s sad story reminds me of a short story I read a few years ago about a miracle pill that leaves about 90% of its takers perfectly slim and able to stay that way eating anything, after a few truly disgusting initial days of elimination, but kills the other 10% gruesomely.

Because it’s so wonderfully effective for the majority, there ends up being a ton of social and economic pressure for anyone even slightly overweight to take it, despite said 10% risk of death.

(Edited to add):

“The Pill,” by Meg Elison

https://escapepod.org/2022/11/03/escape-pod-861-the-pill-par...

https://escapepod.org/2022/11/10/escape-pod-862-the-pill-par...

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I have to admit, I would probably have taken the pill depending on how gruesome (or mitigatible) the death is. I've been obese and I've been thin, and life is not worth living when obese.

10 years ago, I was reading about nootropics and ran across an interesting piece on the ethics of drugs (that has probably been lost to time). The question it was asking was "why can we take drugs to bring us to normal, but we can't take drugs that make us better than normal?"

The interesting consequence is that it de facto forces people who don't need drugs to take them or be at a disadvantage. (think adderall at a competitive college or testosterone for lifting).

> The question it was asking was "why can we take drugs to bring us to normal, but we can't take drugs that make us better than normal?"

Because ultimately drugs make you pay one way or another, eg dependency, liver toxicity, numbness of some other facet and so on. When none of those will be true it’s the day they become the new norm

True, but the price vs the amount of effect varies hugely.

Some drugs are a bargain. Caffeine. E-nicotine. Some are hellishly expensive. Solvents will destroy your health without even giving much in the way of a high.

> why can we take drugs to bring us to normal, but we can't take drugs that make us better than normal?

Consider caffeine, which is probably entirely responsible by itself for a significant sliver of the world's total GDP.

We just don't have a lot of drugs like that because it's hard to find stuff that's performance-enhancing without serious side effects.

Thank you, thank you so much for sharing that. It's been a while since the last time my mind was blown away that much.

That is pretty unrealistic with 10% odds but I wonder what the odds would actually have to be for a drug like that to get so popular.

Sounds a little bit like the “fatkins diet” in Makers by Cory Doctorow.

Great story. There were parts that made me think the pill was a metaphor for the covid vaccine, but this story was written several months before the vaccine was released

How does this remind you of this strange story.

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