I know this is a bit of a nitpick, but in his article on the lethality of garlic oil Cecil says that the LD50 of diallyl disulfide is 130mg/kg of body weight, and therefore for a 70kg person would require 9.1g of garlic juice to have a 50/50 shot at dying. However I believe these LD50 numbers are calculated using just the substance in question, and also that diallyl disulfide is not the only component of garlic juice. So, aren’t Cecil’s numbers off by quite a large margin? Of course, I’m having trouble finding a breakdown of the amount of diallyl disulfide per unit of garlic juice, so I can’t give exact values.
A couple more comments on Cecil’s article;
If Garlic has antibiotic properties why hasn’t every organism that garlic would be effective against have a natural defense already? Since they’ve presumably both been around forever. Man-made antibiotics have a reduced effect over time if an organism has adopted a resiliency to it.
From the article
Could someone explain this in more detail? Is he saying that adding fresh garlic to produce covers said produce in oil?
I think Cecil is being conservative here - garlic oil isn’t diallyl disulfide, it’s only one thing which could be in it. Some oils or preparations from garlic even have none in it at all. So I think Cecil is saying “even if you assumed it was all diallyl disulfide, there still isn’t enough to kill you.”
Cecil is talking about the dangers of making home-made garlic oil, so he’s talking about putting the raw garlic in oil. This risk was talked about by Alton Brown too not too long ago.
WAG it’s really harsh. Ammonia is antibiotic too, and nobody’s developed a resistance. So are lots of things.
Is it just me, or would Ballistic Garlic Delivery System be a good band name?
There are possibly several reasons. Starting from the most obvious to the least:
Nature often creates better things than we do. It’s reasonable to think that the reason our antibiotics failed was because they perhaps targeted merely a single protein, or the wrong one. However, penicillin certainly wasn’t man-made, and moreover we’re free to borrow any compound we’d like from biology… and there’s not that much reason to think they’re so superior.
Also, as someone mentioned, there’s plenty of stuff that’ll kill bacteria with little chance of ever creating resistence. However, that’s usually because that stuff is just incredibly deadly, including to us. So I don’t think it really aplies too directly to this case.
However, the real reason, at least as far as it applies to natural antibiotics in general, is far more subtle. It regards the way evolution works. Basically, if you let an organism take root in your body, then dump a poison into its ecosystem with nowhere for it to turn, and then, after 99% are dead, you let the part that remained to start growing again… you’ll be left with a very effective mechanism for bringing out the genes for resistence. (Note that antibiotics are most likely to develop resistence precisely when they are not used fully.) However, if the ecosystem surrounds some object, and most things that go inside it die, and those that do not die do not, upon exiting, have any advantage over those who never entered, then the selective pressure is much more slight. (The important part of the distinction is mostly what happens at the end… in one case the survivors are chosen and then allowed to breed and multiply a great deal, while in the other the survivors aren’t magnified thus. Also, like I said, antibiotics are removed after a brief time, while a garlic will be a garlic forever. It’s much easier–ie it is more likely that you’ll have genes which will allow you–to survive temporariliy rather than permanently.)
Finally, the real real reason is that garlic didn’t create its chemical to defend itself against bacteria. If you haven’t noticed, fruits don’t generally have endogenous microfauna. So it’s a moot point.
but… if garlic were ever used as an antibiotic, yes, there will be resistence.
I’m thinking more along the lines of a chain of Italian cuisine delivery targeted toward Gen-Y consumers. 
I copied my post over from the other thread on this subject because I do have a couple of problems with the answer that was given.
First, Cecil uses the LD-50 for rats to extrapolate the theoretical LD-50 for humans. While this is a common practice to estimate human casualities, it by no means indicates with any certainty that 50% of a target human population would expire when given the dose extrapolated from a rat study.
He then perpetuates this flaw by using the compound he found with the lowest LD-50, and makes an unstated assumption that the entire fluid consists of this “most lethal” compound.
Garlic (oil) is made up of dozens of compounds. . . The main components of the volatile oil are sulfur compounds, especially allicin, diallyl disulfide, and diallyl trisulfide. (Source: American Botanical Council: http://www.herbalgram.org/default.asp?c=garlic)
So even with double the dose (from 9 to 18 grams) of garlic oil, you may be only getting a fraction of the amount of diallyl disulfide needed to reach an extrapolated LD-50.
The second no-no is extrapolating that if you double the dose, you can ensure the lethality. Nine grams = LD-50 does not mean that 18 grams = LD-100.
In my opinion, this perpetuates the ignorance of the public when it comes to their perception of the hazards of chemicals/toxins/poisons in their lives. I think Cecil can do better!
Check out the Burt Reynolds movie Sharkey’s Machine (one of his good ones). There’s a hit man in it who soaks his bullets in garlic, because his victims “die screaming for their mothers”. Nicholson’s supposed to have done the same thing in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I wouldn’t try stealing a band name from either of those guys.
wouldn’t the incredible wind velocity rip nearly all of any liquid right off a bullet? (ignoring how it might mess up your gun). I mean a tiny layer (of arsenic, say) will stay. But will garlic be potent enough?