Who wants a magic drink stirrer that will tell you whether a would-be rapist has spiked your drink in an attempt to remove your defenses? Kind of a genius idea, if the scientists can get it funded, though it obviously would have relatively limited scope.
An Israeli scientist who co-developed the device told the AFP, “You just dip it into your drink, it might actually look like a stirrer in the final production, it’s tiny, very tiny.” The stirrer has a clear formula that gets dirty when either ketamine or GHB are detected in the drink.
They’re still tweaking with the notification process: “We haven’t decided how it will let you know. Maybe it will just light up or a part of it will rotate or maybe it will send a signal to your cell phone because you want to be discreet about it.” Ioffe added, “We have some very, very optimistic preliminary results. All we need is money.”
The drugs in question, of course, are also known as “date rape drugs,” though the phrase “date rape” just makes it sound like a kinder, friendlier kind of rape. (And anyway, would you really consider a random dude at a bar your “date?”) And plenty of rapists have other ways of preying on women without drugs, including targeting very drunk or passed out women. And though this is a remote possibility, if the device became widely in use, would women who didn’t use it be blamed for not exhausting all anti-rape possibilities? In any case, good to see science on the case.