Although there are many ways to catch a lie and a liar, such as finding inconsistencies in the story told, reading the liar’s face and controlling their behavior, the method of catching the lie that we will talk about now is quite different.
For example, have you ever heard of a truth serum? This serum is called sodium thiopental or sodium pentothal. It is generally seen that Hollywood includes some scenes in espionage-themed TV shows such as Stormbreaker and Person of Interest.
Sodium pentothal was originally a medical anesthetic but was later used as a truth serum.
This medication is a pain reliever developed by Ernest H. Volwiler and Donalee L. Tabern of Abbot Laboratories. It is known that this drug was first used by ophthalmologists in 1934 to anesthetize their patients before performing surgery.
The person using the drug would fall asleep within a minute and wake up after about 15 minutes. It was even used in pregnant women because it did not affect the fetus. This drug was started to be used as an alternative in 1931 by the British doctor J. Stephen Horsley to tell the truth. According to Horsley, people were able to express their private thoughts more comfortably while under the influence of this drug.
Of course, it was inevitable that a drug that tells the truth would be used in the field of psychiatry.
This drug has been used to communicate more easily with psychiatric patients and to relax patients. Patients relax and calm down after taking this medicine so they don’t have to think twice about answering the doctor’s questions. In a way, we can say that it creates a hypnotic effect for psychiatric patients.
The field of use of this drug was not only limited to medical fields, it was also used by intelligence.
There are allegations that the CIA used this drug to get information from terrorists. In fact, an operation known as Operation Bluebird in 1951 was later renamed Operation Artichoke, and it was claimed to be an operation aimed at developing drugs such as sodium pentothal for use in interrogating people.
This drug, believed to be a truth serum, also harms brain activity.
The drug is said to have many different uses. For example, it can be used in the treatment of epilepsy, regulating sleep and relieving anxiety. This drug is also described as a barbiturate (sedative) and can suppress the electrical activity of neurons in brain cells. Thus, the drug prevents neurons from wasting energy to transmit information. When the energy requirement in the brain decreases, it is seen that this drug is actually harmful for the brain, since the metabolic level of the brain also decreases.
In short, although this substance, called the truth drug, was once used by intelligence and medical authorities, there is no satisfactory evidence that the rumors that such a drug is used to tell the truth are true. If there was such a drug that would tell the truth one hundred percent, all the criminals would have been caught easily and all the problems in the society would have been solved. In other words, until now, there is no method to reveal the truth in a pure form.
Sources: 1, 2
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