IF WE HAVE A TRUTH SERUM, CAN WE USE IT?

Great Debates
1

In WW2 they had a ‘truth serum’ that they used now and then with prisoners and psychiatric patients. There were two drugs that were used as such serums, one was scopolamine and the other I don’t recall.

I’ve heard of surgical patients being given certain anesthetics, blabbing happily away after they went under until the anesthesiologist slapped the mask on or inserted the breathing tube.

If we have such drugs, and if they work, why don’t we use them on criminals or suspects to get to the truth of the matter instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, boring the crap out of jury members and generating tons of paper records over a period of months?

If the suspect did not do it, then he/she has nothing to hide. If they did something else illegal and serious (smoking pot, blowing coke, shop lifted a wallet would not apply), then they could be prosecuted for those crimes also. (Guidelines could be set for unexpected disclosures.)

Like, the OJ farce could have been settled really quickly with a shot of this stuff. The same with Oswald. (The guy who shot Kennedy.)

If we have it, aside from the normal Civil Rights and Human Rights protests, why do we not use it or develop a drug to do what we want?

I’ve been to some court cases and, MAN are they boring, annoying, frustrating and even somewhat ludicrous! Plus the judge can suppress evidence that might help the accused if he’s had a bad day or something.

A shot of serum in a legal and medical environment, with lawyers, judge and medical staff present. Certain approved questions asked, answers given and BANG guilty or not guilty.

Example:
PROSECUTOR: Mr. Simpson, did you kill your ex-wife?
SIMPSON - DRUGGED: No.
PROSECUTOR: Mr. Simpson, did you cut the throat of your ex-wife to the extent that she was almost decapitated.
SIMPSON: Sure did. Good job wasn’t it?
PROSECUTOR: Mr. Simpson, did you kill Mr. Goldman?
SIMPSON: Sure did. The fool tried to fight me.

CASE CLOSED.
Verdict: Guilty on all counts.
Sentence: Life in prison without parole.

2

How does one decide if a truth drug works?

3

Well, I am no legal expert, but wouldn’t that violate their fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination?

4

The problem is that “truth serums” aren’t.

This problem is highlighted by a number of the “repressed memory” cases, where patients were given “truth serum” and told stories about being abused, etc., that were totally false.

These serums put you into a state where you can be easily led. So while it might mean you are more likely to tell something that you otherwise wouldn’t have, you are also more likely to say things that are not true at all.

5

The second truth serum you mention in the OP might be LSD. I know that it was tested by the military at some point, but results were inconclusive. I think that this was not until Vietnam, however.

As far as truth serum use becoming an accepted practice, the fifth amendment is enough to prevent even 100% effective truth serums from being used. It’s hard as hell to change the Constitution.

6

I believe the other drug you were thinking of is “sodium pentothal” not LSD so much.

7

ah, truth drugs. shrouded in mystery, intrigue, and plain old american fun. avalongod mentioned sodium pentathol, the tom-clancy truth drug, favored my mystery writers and hollywood hacks.

but argyle87 was on the ball with LSD. that was one of the many drugs tested out by the u.s. government from the 1940s to the 60s or even 70s (if you choose to believe that the govt has ceased such research).

truth drugs were first investigated by the O.S.S. (office of strategic services, precursor to the cia) asnd later the cia. there were a bunch of projects which this fell under, such as chickwit and the infamous mkultra. the main objective was to ascertain the efficacy of certain substances in forcing secrets out of operative, both to get great truth drugs of our own, and to thwart any td’s the enemy might have.

my favorite part of this whole business is the marijuana was the first viable candidate! no fucking lie. lovely mary jane had a bunch of great side effects which made it an ideal td. subjects became loquacious, and topics of conversation were easily controlled by the experimenter. the boys down in washington were even able to decoct a thc concentrate which was a tasteless, colorless, and odorless liquid. the cia code name for mj? sugar. can it get better?

you bet. the next candidate was lsd. under mkultra, hundreds if not thousands of citizens were unwittingly dosed with acid, both under laboratory conditions as well as in the real world. cia higher-ups, in fact, intercepted a plan by the mkultra people to dose the punch bowl at (i believe) the office christmas party.

one more note: one of the latter truth drugs was bz a.k.a. qnb. for those of you who read infinite jest, this is the potent DMZ (‘madame psychosis’), and a fictionalized version of bz was the plot driver in ‘jacob’s ladder’.

unfortunately (for those who rally for the mind control cause) none of these drugs worked as ‘truth drugs’. sure, people became more talkative, but they were also very distractable and usually kind of out of it. as for the truth, it becomes even more subjective when tripping (e.g., my friend becae convinced that most people were ‘overlords’, robots who were trying to infiltrate humanity. they had glowing orbs underneath the skin of their cheeks). and worst of all, people could still lie if they wanted to (provided they had had enough preparation).

so as with most great plot devices, poetic license has trumped the truth.

8

jb_farley, you rule!

As someone who knows about this stuff - in the Bond film “Octopussy”, the bad guy tells Bond that he is going to interrogate him using “curare, with an appropriate psychedelic compound. Guaranteed results.” Any factual basis to this, or did the scriptwriter pull it out his ass?

9

blushing

um, i don’t know, but i will talk out of my ass. it seems to be something i do well…

curare is the blowdart poison that comes from like the back of toads or something. it is an anticholergenic, which means it interferes with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine’s transmissions. it’s main effect (i think) is to paralyze the muscles in the body, but still leave one conscious. it kills by suffocation. i think it’s only muscles under conscious direction that are affected, cuz it doesn’t stop the heart, but i always thought the diaphraggm was autonomic too (however, that is a topic for another thread).

so mr bond would not be able to talk if given a dose of curare. and the truth-drug effects hallucinogenics would still be nonexistant even if he could breathe somehow. i would have to say the screenwriter pulled this one out of his heinie.

jb

p.s.- i remember reading somewhere that curare was used for operations before we came upon anesthesia. bellows or some other artificial lung apparatus were employed to keep the subject breathing. you could still feel everything, you just couldn’t do jack shit about it

10

oh, and prism82, i forgot that you brought up scopolomine in the OP. i vaugely remember reading about it re:MKULTRA, but only half of my vauge remembrances have any basis to them.

i do know that scopolomine is the active drug in jimsonweed. not too pretty of a trip. jimsonweed is usually clasified as a delerient, an order of magnitude or two above hallucinogens. someone under the influence of a delerient sees and hears things and believes them to be real. for instance, talking to somebody who is obviously not in the room. so interrogation would pretty much be ruled out.

11

OOPS! i meant prism02. damn i have to start proofreading.

blushing, but this time in shame

12

The OP asks if we could use a truth serum if we had it. It has already been pointed out that we don’t have one and likely never will. But even if we did have a 100% surefire truth serum, we couldn’t use it, at least not in many criminal cases. Thanks to the 5th Ammendment, no person can be compelled to testify against himself.