Is Botox safe? YIKES!

One of my dear ladies called today and asked me what I thought of Botox. My response was somewhere between incredulity and utter horror! I still find it incredible to believe that this "treatment" was actually approved by our friends at the FDA. I am further amazed that people actually allow this to be done. Oh, please dear God preserve us from ourselves.

I should mention that this lady wasn't asking because she wanted to do it. She was asking because her "friends" said she should do it! With friends like this you really don't need enemies. So let me explain first what it is.

It is the most acutely toxic substance known to man, with a median lethal dose of about 1 ng/kg when introduced intravenously[10] and 3 ng/kg when inhaled. This means that, depending on the method of introduction into the body, a mere 90–270 nanograms of botulinum toxin could be enough to kill an average 90 kg (200 lb) person.

Just to explain that a bit. A nanogram is a billionth of a gram! It takes 32 grams to make an ounce!

Food-borne botulism usually results from ingestion of food that has become contaminated with spores (such as a perforated can) in an anaerobic environment, allowing the spores to germinate and grow. Remember when your mom wouldn't but dented cans? That was a huge "NO NO."

The growing (vegetative) bacteria produce toxin. It is the ingestion of preformed toxin that causes botulism, not the ingestion of the spores or the vegetative bacteria. Infant and wound botulism both result from infection with spores which subsequently germinate, resulting in production of toxin and the symptoms of botulism.

Researchers "discovered" in the 1950s that injecting overactive muscles with minute quantities of botulinum toxin type-A would result in decreased muscle activity by blocking the release of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, thereby rendering the muscle unable to contract for up to a period of 3 to 4 months. In other words, your muscle tissue is rendered useless. It is paralyzed! Why not simply hire an Amazonian Indian to shoot you with curare?

Alan Scott, a San Francisco ophthalmologist, first applied tiny doses of the toxin in a medicinal sense to treat 'crossed eyes' (strabismus) and 'uncontrollable blinking' (blepharospasm), but needed a partner to gain regulatory approval to market his discovery as a drug. Allergan renamed the drug Botox.

As of 2007, Botox injection is the most common cosmetic operation, with 4.6 million procedures in the United States, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Qualifications for Botox injectors vary by county, state and country. Botox Cosmetic providers include dermatologists, plastic surgeons, cosmetic physicians, nurses practitioners, nurses, physician assistants, and medical spas.

No one has looked at the long term effects of being continually shot up with a poison. No one has researched the effects of this "safe neutralized" deadly poison over any period of time. As long as we can seek the Holy Grail of beauty, the gloves are off and safety be damned.

Do you realize that one 32 gram dose of botulinum dropped into a city water supply could literally wipe out an entire population of a major city in a few days? But, at least you'll be wrinkle free when you die.

C'mon folks. How far have we gone in the search for beauty? If we spent this kind of time on cancer "cures" we would all be healthy...wrinkled maybe but healthy. Are we really this depraved that we put poison in our bodies without question?