http://digitaljournal.com/article/324779
Is Scopolamine the world's scariest drug?
By Yukio Strachan
May 14, 2012
What would it take to be considered the world's scariest drug? A documentary that has gone viral in two days has a suggestion –– it’s one that criminals use to erase your memory and renders you incapable of exercising your free will.
The drug, called scopolamine, also known as ‘The Devil’s Breath,' is derived from a particular type of tree common in Colombia called the Borrachero tree.
The word "borrachero," which roughly translates to "get-you-drunk," grows wild in Bogota,Colombia.
This tree which naturally produces scopolamine is so famous in the countryside that mothers warn their children not to fall asleep below its cunningly beautiful yellow and white flowers.
"We probably should put some sort of fence up," jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota's botanical gardens to Reuters, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere. The pollen alone is said to conjure up strange dreams.
And when extracted and made into a colorless, odorless and tasteless powder, scopolamine does more than induce strange dreams. Quickly dissolved in liquids, criminals slip the powder into drinks or sprinkle it on food. Reuters states that victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts. Women have been drugged repeatedly over days and gang-raped or rented out as prostitutes.
(snip)
Enter the CIA
Because of the residual effects in newborns, the technique was abandoned in the mid 60's. But before it was abandoned in the 1960s, it caught the eye of the CIA.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency website, "In 1922 it occurred to House that a similar technique might be employed in the interrogation of suspected criminals." and he arranged to interview under scopolamine two convicts from the Dallas county jail who volunteered as test subjects to demonstrate their innocence. To authorities, however, their guilt " seemed clearly confirmed," the article states.
Under the drug, both men denied the charges on which they were held; and both, upon trial, were found not guilty. One of the prisoners afterwards confirmed House’s hypothesis: "After I had regained consciousness I began to realize that at times during the experiment I had a desire to answer any question that I could hear, and it seemed that when a question was asked my mind would center upon the true facts of the answer and I would speak voluntarily, without any strength of will to manufacture an answer.’
The CIA says: Enthusiastic at this success, House concluded that a patient under the influence of scopolamine "cannot create a lie" Because he said the drug ‘will depress the cerebrum to such a degree as to destroy the power of reasoning’. ... there is no power to think or reason."
His experiment and this conclusion attracted wide attention, and the idea of a "truth" drug was thus launched upon the public consciousness.
Scopolamine in Interrogation: "Truth Serum"
The phrase "truth serum" is believed to have appeared first in a news report of House's experiment in the Los Angeles Record, sometime in 1922.
But in time, what was found with infants when they induced twilight sleep during children, was also found with criminals during interrogations: the residual effects out weighed the benefits. According to the CIA:
Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a "truth" drug. Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview.
Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects.
The CIA writes that only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it extensively.
"One police writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water."
Placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water. Sound familiar?
(snip)
**************************************************************
Drug Turns Crime Victims Into Zombies
By Phil Stewart
http://www.biopsychiatry.com/scopolamine/borrachero.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.
Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.
Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists.
"When I woke up in the hospital, I asked for my baby and nobody said anything. They just looked at me," Fernandez said, weeping. Police believe her son Diego was taken by a gang which traffics in infants.
Colorless, odorless and tasteless, scopolamine is slipped into drinks and sprinkled onto food. Victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts. Women have been drugged repeatedly over days and gang-raped or rented out as prostitutes.
In the case of Fernandez, the mother of three was rendered submissive enough to surrender her youngest child.
Most troubling for police is the way the drug acts on the brain. Since scopolamine completely blocks the formation of memories, unlike most date-rape drugs used in the United States and elsewhere, it is usually impossible for victims to ever identify their aggressors.
"When a patient (of U.S. date-rape drugs) is under hypnosis, he or she usually recalls what happened. But with scopolamine, this isn't possible because the memory was never recorded," said Dr. Camilo Uribe, the world's leading expert on the drug.
Scopolamine has a long, dark history in Colombia dating back to before the Spanish conquest.
Legend has it that Colombian Indian tribes used the drug to bury alive the wives and slaves of fallen chiefs, so that they would quietly accompany their masters into the afterworld.
Nazi "angel of death" Joseph Mengele experimented on scopolamine as an interrogation drug. And scopolamine's sedative and amnesia-producing qualities were used by mothers in the early 20th century to help them through childbirth.
Finding the drug in Colombia these days is not hard.
The tree which naturally produces scopolamine grows wild around the capital and is so famous in the countryside that mothers warn their children not to fall asleep below its yellow and white flowers. The tree is popularly known as the "borrachero," or "get-you-drunk," and the pollen alone is said to conjure up strange dreams.
"We probably should put some sort of fence up," jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota's botanical gardens, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere.
"If you ate a few of those, it would kill you."
(snip)
The alkaloid is used legally in medicines across the world to treat everything from motion sickness to the tremors of Parkinson's disease.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.