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Heavy water is harmful to mammals if it replaces 25% of the hydrogen in a person's body, and lethal if it replaces 50%. Heavy water weighs around 10% more than normal water, so the lethal water weight gain would average around 5% or less.

It seems it could be an interesting method for assassination. Radioactive materials have been used, but they are lethal in small amounts and easily noticed. If someone was murdered with heavy water, it would be secret, and if revealed it would be even more intimidating because it would be constant and massive poisoning over at least a week, rather than one incident. Heavy water also kills like radiation poisoning by shutting down cellular division, so there would be the horrific death factor too.

Could heavy water be plausibly used as a method of assassination, or would it be too complicated to carry out? How difficult would it be to detect, and could anything be done to reverse it once discovered?
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