Here is a news story claiming that a gang of robbers in Uganda has
The only references I can find online seem to be the same story. I’m skeptical for three reasons:
[ol]
[li]This sounds suspiciously like the “chloroform perfume” hoax that goes around now and then.[/li][li]Wouldn’t the sedative affect the woman wearing it?[/li][li]The “clean breast” joke might be a journalist trying to be funny, or it might be a key to the satire.[/li][/ol]
I doubt there’s a GQ answer to this, so I’m dropping it in IMHO. Anybody have a read on this? BS or real?
If chloroform is anything like, say, ether, not only might it make the wearer a bit dizzy, at the least, it would have a very strong, unpleasant smell.
Chloroform is a volitile liquid, so it wont stay on the breast very long after putting it there. It takes a pretty large dose of chloroform to knock someone out. I suppose they could soak their bras in chloroform and shove their victims face in it, but I don’t think casually breathing chloroform fumes is likely to knock you out. I’ve smelled plenty of chloroform and not even felt dizzy. Soaking a cloth with it then forcing the victim to breath through the cloth is another thing. I have no idea how well that workes.
I’ll have to go with a big dose of scepticism myself. I’ve smell chloroform once in a chemistry class and there’s nothing subtle about it. You can’t get a big enough snootfull to be effective and not suspect there was something up.
I do recall a few years ago some similar stories where a woman would apply eyedrops to her nips and entice her victim to lick them, rendering him unconscious. Yes, there is a chemical in some drops that will do that. I can’t find links to those stories, but I did find a few similar.
According to that website, the CSI plot used Scopolamine. It looks like that would have the desired effect at a very small dose (I saw 300 micrograms in one of the references). I didn’t have the strength to wade through the entire single-paragraph plot summary on that site, but I couldn’t tell if the CSI plot was that the drug was inhaled or ingested by licking the woman. In either case, one of the perpetrators does show up unconscious and wind up in the hospital due to exposure to the stuff.
This makes slightly more sense. I guess the woman could apply it to her skin just before getting in bed with the guy. According to this site, just 1 mg of Rohypnol can do the trick. It comes in a pill, though, as far as I know. I guess the attacker could grind one up in some kind of sticky substance and apply it to her chest. I’d still be skeptical, but that seems slightly more plausible.
Right. Is the guy going to mistake the chloroform/whatever for a particularly alluring purfume? I would think he’d recognize something was amiss, and at the very least avert his face.
Even if there is some way this scheme could work, why would the attacker go to all that trouble? Why not just spike his drink? Or, if it is a “gang” of robbers, wht not take the guy to her bedroom where an accomplice whaps him upside the head? I’m still calling bullshit.
When travelling to Ecuador I read of a similar scheme involving borracchero, a relative of our morning glory, which is a source of scopalamine. The method described was similar to his one but, try as I might, I was never picked up and robbed at a bar.
) in an experimental attempt to replicate the results under identical conditions!
).
