Sunday, September 9, 2007

A little Love from Alan Dershowitz

"What about the nature of the substance injected [truth serum]? If it is relatively and creates no significant health risks, the only issue would be that it compels the recipient to do something that he doesn't want to do. But he has a legal obligation to do precisely what the serum compels him to do: answer all the questions truthfully." Alan Dershowitz

Dershowitz, Alan M. "Torture Should Be Legalized and Regulated." Is Torture Ever Justified? Ed. Tom Head. Detroit: Thomas Gale, 2005.

3 comments:

_J_ said...

That quote doesn't seem to be entirely asinine. Untill you start to talk about invasions of personal privacy and all of that.

But these are terrorists. They aren't people.

Mike Lewis said...

1) Truth Serum is more or less a fictional thing. It does not really exist. Sodium Pentothal, when given to prisonors does not cause them to tell the truth. It shuts down Higher Brain Functions making it hard for prisonors to tell what is going on. They are easier confused, and therefore are less prone to lying. The problem is the are just as prone to suggestion. Ff the interrogator keeps asking about something, the prisoner will just start repeating back what he hears.

2) TRUTH DRUGS SHUT DOWN HIGHER BRAIN FUNCTIONS - Now is that not a significant health risk? At some point in the last we had an argument over whether or not Absinthe was hallucinogen. At some point i said that, unlike things like LSD or mushrooms, the hallucination caused by Absinthe come from mild neural toxins. To which you responded a mild neural-toxine still.....a neural toxin.

3) without due process, something that terrorists do not get because W doesnt think they have writes under the Geneva Conventions, there is no way to tell whether someone is or is not a terrorists...or in your world people.

_J_ said...

But that's your problem. You're operating in the real world. You're basing your stances upon empirical evidence.

These other people are not.

And that's why they are presidents and professors at Harvard Law and you are a lowly grad student.