That skepticism was there right from the start 80 years ago. Brendan Borrell is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter bborrell. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. New substances pharmacologically similar to scopolamine were explored.
Barbiturates, like sodium amytal and sodium pentothal, were used extensively during World War II for psychiatric purposes. A small dose of the drug caused the patient's heart rate to decrease, relieved tension and anxiety.
This state of complete relaxation would enable the soldiers to calmly speak of their experiences in order to lessen their trauma. Consequently, observing the advantages that could be obtained from using truth-inducing drugs, the Nazis experimented with mescaline in the Dachau concentration camp while the CIA and the U.
Army explored alternatives such as LSD and cannabis. Their effectiveness made them an essential component in interrogations. Sodium thiopental is part of a group of drugs called barbiturates, drugs widely used in the s and 60s to help people sleep better.
They are no longer used for that purpose because they are extremely addictive and potentially lethal - Marilyn Monroe famously died from a barbiturate overdose. I decided to take a low dose of sodium thiopental under proper medical supervision, with anaesthetist Dr Austin Leach monitoring my vital signs throughout.
Barbiturates work by slowing down the rate at which messages travel through the brain and spinal column. The more barbiturates there are, the harder it is for chemical messages to cross the gaps between one neuron and the next. Your whole thinking process slows down until you fall asleep. With thiopental, that happens very quickly indeed. Although it was originally developed as an anaesthetic, it was soon noticed that when patients were in that twilight zone halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness, they became more chatty and disinhibited.
After the drug had worn off, the patients forgot what they had been talking about. It was decided that sodium thiopental might form the basis for a truth drug, an interrogation tool. But does it really work? I decided that I would have a go at trying to maintain the fiction that rather than being Michael Mosley, science journalist, I would be Michael Mosley, famous heart surgeon.
We started with a very low dose. No law prohibits the use of truth serum, assuming the subject consents. But in a case the Supreme Court ruled that the resulting confessions are coerced and therefore unconstitutional. Even that was highly controversial. The right to remain silent seems incompatible with pharmaceuticals that prevent you from keeping your mouth shut.
Some go so far as to label them a form of torture. That said, they may be acceptable strictly as a means of gathering information, and under other narrow circumstances. Some countries have fewer qualms with these techniques, even in ordinary criminal cases, as demonstrated by several high-profile trials from India.
But again, even where the legal and ethical standing of truth serum is not in question, its credibility is. Nearly a century of scientific literature has confirmed that no known chemical compound can, without the slightest doubt, coax a tongue to truth. Register or Log In. The Magazine Shop.
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