• Question: Have you ever thought about combining your love of cake with your passion for creating new medicines - perhaps medicated victoria sponge??

    Asked by welshie1471 to Billy on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Billy Hicks

      Billy Hicks answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      Great idea Welshie! I’m sure everyone would much prefer to have a nice battenburg when they are ill, rather than have to take medicine.
      I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit today and I think there would be a few issues:
      You would have to make sure the drug is evenly spread throughout the whole of the cake. It would be dangerous to take too much and you wouldn’t get the benefit if you had too little so you have to make sure every slice has the same amount it it. You would also have to make sure every slice was the same size.
      There might be problems with heating up the drug when you bake the cake. Some compounds are not stable at higher temperatures and will degrade. This means the drug could change form and wouldn’t treat you.
      You would also have to check that the ingredients of your cake don’t react with your drug to change it, otherwise it probably wouldn’t work.
      Finally, you would also need to think about how often you need to take the medicine. If you need to take it two or three times a day, then you need to eat a lot of cake! If you only need it once a week then your cake might go stale.

      It might seem strange, but all these points are considered when making a pill. There’s more than just the drug in a tablet you take to make it stable and to make it work properly when you swallow it.
      Sorry this is a bit of a long answer, I get a bit carried away when thinking about cake!

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