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Comment by enlyth | Hacker News Reader

Because what are you going to put on the grapefruit juice label, a list of thousands of drugs that can have interactions with it? If people don't read the leaflets to their medication that's really on them.

It's surprising that people would take any medication without reading the leaflet anyway, given that grapefruit is not the only thing that can interact with them, and it's usually pretty clearly written.

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Something similar to cigarette package warnings, like "this food interacts with many medications, please read the leaflets carefully".

I, for one, look forward to GMO grapefruit trees that produce fruit with the warnings already printed on the peel so that the millions of people globally that get their morning grapefruit fresh can know that there are a few dozen medications the fruit might interact with.

It's weird how many people are seemingly against this. It's simple, cheap and will probably save lives.

It is also enirely and completely useless. You would get desensitized to the warning the second or third time you buy grapefruit, and have 0% chance to remember the ubiquitous warning when you actually get some medication that does interact.

The important thing is for your doctor to be aware, and notify you.

Also, grapefruit is nowhere near the only food that can have terrible interactions with certain drugs.

Desensitization doesnt matter. Grapefruit isnt an addictive drug. I learned about grapefruit's crazy drug interactions about 2 years ago once from an online article. Ever since then Ive been careful.

I was entirely ignorant about them while buying grapefruits and juice for decades.

Well, ours is the profession from which "RTFM" arose as jargon (admittedly not without justification) so it doesn't seem that strange.

This was literally the argument for Prop 65 warnings

Most foods don't have so many interactions with drugs. It wouldn't hurt to put a reminder on the grapefruit juice to check that stack of paper that came with your prescription to see if it's on the list.

No one reads warnings more than a handful of times in their entire life.

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