Lethal injections start with a large injection of sodium pentathol followed by pancuronium bromide, and finally potassium Chloride.
If those charged with doing the lethal injection start the pancuronium bromide into the IV with out flushing the IV the remaining sodium pentathol reacts with the pancuronium Bromide to form a solid. That results in a very painful death over as much as a half our to an hour. Executioners often claim to have made a mistake, but it seems likely to me that they want to make the death as painful as possible under the circumstances. There have been "problems" with the lethal injections of several serial killers. "Problems" injecting the chemicals result in it taking an intensively painful half our to a full hour for the convicted killer to die from the "problem plagued" injection.
But my question is, are their better 'truth serums" than sodium pentathol? If there are, isn't it likely that they are being used on the terrorists we capture? Our laws restrict us from doing anything more than asking "Pretty Please" to gain information from captured terrorists. In the current case of the number 3 guy, the press says the Pakistani agents are doing the questioning. They say the Al Quaeda guy is talking.
I am suspicious of reports that say this or that captured terrorist being questioned by a foreign government did or did not talk. I would think that if there are really effective truth serums.. they all talk and that they talk as rapidly as the injection takes effect.
I can't recall of any press reports on truth serums. I wonder why? Are they a myth? Do effective ones exist? Do those who question for us use them?
Anybody know or have evidence to support an opinion?
They outlawed them a few years ago.
In some people's cases, truth IS stranger than fiction.
Wouldn't want to let the women out there know that some men are not only mean and stupid, but quite deceptive also.
The above link was from Does Truth Serum Work? at Slate/MSNBC. They contend it doesn't work, no suprise there.
I have wondered though, if the govt doesn't have it's own potions mixed up that isn't let into public knowlege. But those are my musings.
Let's start with what sodium pentathol is and is not.
Recalling from my DoD days...
SP is not "truth serum", though folks have often taken to calling it such. SP is a mild sedative and anesthetic which, if given in a sufficient dose, will affect the cognitive functions of the brain, particularly the area dealing with reason. It's effects are not unlike alcohol, but the effort to reach the same point is much lower (you would have to drink several beers, glasses of wine, or shots of liquor to have the same effect on the brain as a shot of SP).
This leads to the two problems associated with SP. As you are doubtless aware, there are people whom you can get totally smashed and won't let lose with any kind of information. This is also true of SP; it cannot make someone talk who is not already predisposed to do so on some lower level of conscious thought--it can only breakdown their will. If the threshold point of getting the information is lower than consciousness, you don't get it.
The second problem is the quality of the information. Just as with a drunk, the ability to reason is shot, and thus the ability to separate bits of fact from other bits of facts from stuff the brain just thought up. It's sort of like (crude analogy) dumping all the bits on your hard drive and then trying to deduce the information from it without a catalog (which we normally have as the directory and file structure). What comes out could be total fiction, mostly fiction, half and half, mostly truth, or all truth. The stuff has to be corrobated--it will be, at best, a lead.
I'm not sure whether there are other substances used by the CIA/NSA/DoD types; I would hazard the guess they probably would also be "reason center attackers" like SP.