I meant to post this a while back, but the whole postdoc poisoning case reached an anti-climatic conclusion a few months back. As you might remember, Ben Chun Liu, a postdoc at UCSF, was charged with adding ethidum bromide to his co-worker’s water. The DA initially planned to bring poisoning charges against Liu, but his lawyers argued that ethidium is not a poison at such low concentrations.
Well that argument seems to have won out. The Chronicle reports that all charges have been dropped and that Dr. Liu has apologized to his coworker (strangely though, the Chronicle continues to insist that the ethidium bromide turned the water blue, despite it having a dark red color). While one might question how adding a laboratory reagent to your coworkers’ drinks without telling them is legal, it’s pretty clear that not only was Dr. Liu’s ”victim” never in any serious danger, but also the defense lawyers arguments were scientifically sound.
One last point that this whole ordeal has been useful in illustrating: In research labs we tend to be overly careful about how we dispose of waste and how we handle chemicals. In fact that’s what makes this whole case so shocking; biology labs are extremely (and unnecessarily) paranoid about their ethidium waste, which is collected and disposed of separately from all other waste. Given that it appears we’ve decided its ok to drink this stuff, you’d think that it might be time to reexamine the expensive and time consuming manner in which we deal with the waste, right? Well, I wouldn’t expect changes anytime soon; lab safety guidelines are not formed from rational risk assessment, but rather from a “are-we-covered-in-all-possible cases-legally” viewpoint. Just look at In the Pipeline’s recent analysis of the MSDS of sand: it’s listed as a “cancer hazard” and is only to be used in a chemical fume hood (be sure to bring one to the beach with you next time!). Regardless, Dr. Liu is free and this seems to be the end to the case – I suppose we can all just be thankful that he didn’t add any sand to the water…
