Medicines Lose Effectiveness In Space 116
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the Johnson Space Center have shown that the effectiveness of drugs declines more rapidly in space. Engineers are working on a project which could bring space travel to the general public but experiments suggest that the health hazards facing astronauts may be greater than previously thought. Astronauts on long space missions may not be able to take paracetamol to treat a headache or antibiotics to fight infection, a study has found. I wonder if diseases are also affected?"
Re:Without a definite reason... (Score:5, Funny)
That throbbing red circle you see on the TV adverts for pills actually becomes cone-shaped in space. This means the pill atoms are the wrong shape to be effective. Redesigning them would be prohibitively expensive even for NASA.
Plus, they're very hard to swallow in microgravity.