LD50
LD50
[A figure in a white coat lies on the floor, crushed beneath a giant pile of binders & paper. Megan and Cueball in white coats stand next to him, looking on. Megan is holding a clipboard.]
[Caption below the panel:] The LD 50 of toxicity data is 2 kilograms per kilogram.

LD 50 is a term used in toxicology that identifies the median lethal dose of a toxin, or how much is required to kill 50% of a given population. LD 50 s are usually measured in g/kg, as the amount of toxin to kill something is usually linearly related with its mass. The lower the LD 50 , the more lethal the toxin. An LD 50 can be determined for almost any substance: for example, the LD 50 for sugar (in rats) is 29.7 g/kg. However, Botulinum toxin (commercially known as Botox in the beauty industry), the most acutely toxic substance known, has a LD 50 of roughly 1 ng/kg, or 0.000000001 g/kg, a vanishingly small amount.
The comic is making the joke that the LD 50 of papers on toxicology is 2 kg/kg, so it takes 2 kilograms of papers on toxicology to kill a person for each kilogram they weigh. The worldwide average weight of an adult is 62 kg (137 lb), so the lethal dose would be 124 kg (273 lb) of toxicology papers. Death is apparently caused by compression or smothering.
The title text says it will take less paper to kill a person if the paper is shoved down their throat instead of dropped on them, either by suffocation or by bursting the subject's stomach. A third method of delivering a toxin is by subcutaneous injections which are highly effective in administering vaccines and medications, but that number is omitted since they couldn't figure out how to do it. If they could, the amount of paper required to trigger a fatal blood vessel blockage would probably be fairly small.
[A figure in a white coat lies on the floor, crushed beneath a giant pile of binders & paper. Megan and Cueball in white coats stand next to him, looking on. Megan is holding a clipboard.]
[Caption below the panel:] The LD 50 of toxicity data is 2 kilograms per kilogram.
