With all due respect to "urinetherapeutics" the one use for urine I conspicuously didn't include was drinking it. Gandhi, and not a few others, are free to drink their own urine. There is an entire industry out there dealing with drinking urine and other more recreational uses.

Insert the term "urinetherapeutics" and/or "golden shower" into any search engine and you will get more than and eye-full. Other than a passing interest and cursory examination on my part, for purely educational purposes I assure you, I don't go that way.

I do note that, as far as I can tell, Gandhi and the others consuming or having fun with their urine are not in situations where water is in short supply. Probably a good thing. I imagine after drinking urine or otherwise playing in it I would be looking for some fresh water to wash out my mouth and take a long shower in.

I also have my doubts as to the effective truth of the claim that "urine is not a toxic substance". OK I realize that most people, as long as they chase their urine with sufficient water, don't get poisoned by it. And I'm also aware that certain cultures, outside the wilder side of the sex industry, do consume urine for various reasons.

Inuit medicine men are said to harvest a rare fungi that has hallucinogenic properties. To get the most use of the plant the compound is reused. The urine excreted after the drug is given is carefully collected and reused on the next patient. Evidently the hallucinogen is not broken down by the body and it remains very much chemically effective through several uses.

This came to mind reading about some modern problems. First was antibiotic resistance. Many antibiotics remain intact through the body and are excreted primarily in the urine. Currently most are simply flushed away and dispersed into the environment. It is well documented that many of the most widely used antibiotics show up in significant concentrations in the nations waterways. Come to find out antibiotics survive sewage treatment also.

Which strikes me as a pretty good way of making sure that resistance to that particular antibiotic will develop quickly and become widespread across a wide cross-section of bacteria. Flushed down a toilet the antibiotic is greatly diluted and exposed to a variety of bacteria from other humans.

Another thought is that some of the more exotic antibiotics are very expensive.

It sounds to me like it would produce positive results on both ends if persons taking these rarer antibiotics were confined to a structure with a dedicated sewage treatment facility. One where the sewerage is incinerated or otherwise treated in such a way that the antibiotics are completely destroyed so they are not released into the environment. Some thought to the collection of and recycling of antibiotics, or other medical compounds, from urine might also be looked into.

Perhaps the Inuit medicine-men were on to something when they practiced their radical recycling.