I'm currently taking a psychopharmacology course and we recently learned that there is actually a way to turn a living, breathing person into a living, breathing zombie. This practice is mainly seen in Haiti, and elicits great amounts of fear due to the workings of witch doctors who practice voodoo. Haitian voodoo was brought from Africa to Haiti in the 16th century by slaves. It is a religion based mainly on a belief in the spirit world. A main aspect of Haitian voodoo is a belief that an outside spirit or other individual can take over another individual's body and control it. So in the case of zombies, and the unlucky few who are forced to undergo this terrifying transformation, the experience is far from enjoyable, but more importantly, far from the victim's memory when it is all said and done.
The victim is first sent to a witch doctor to have a large wound or skin infection treated. This is when the victim is then administered a large dose of TTX, or tetrodotoxin, to the open would. This toxin blocks Na channels along the axons of motor neurons in the periphery, but has no effect on the sensory neurons in the periphery. (If the individual is given to much TTX, they will die, usually dues to respiratory failure, unable to breath because their muscles can no longer receive stimulus signals to do so). The victim is then watched until their heart rate slows significantly, and can no longer speak or move, so that they are considered dead (but the victim has almost all sensory ability still intact at this point, so they know what is happening to them, but lack the ability to do anything about it). They are then subsequently buried alive for a brief amount of time. These people, if they are able to survive the burial, are dug up and immediately administered a anticholinergic drug of some sort, which will inhibit ACh binding in the periphery and CNS, but just enough to calm a person who has just been dug up out of their grave. This shocks the person enough so even though they can again move, they can not gather themselves to run away. This anticholinergic causes the individual to lose their desire to be an individual, and causes retrograde amnesia due to the this drugs' ability to disrupt processes in the CNS, interrupting working memory and causing other memory disturbances. Immediately following this administration, the victim is baptized and given a new name. The victim then acts as if they have a form of PTSD that is not specific to any trigger, rather they seem sensitive to everything around them without the ability to understand why. They are usually held as slaves for as long as these symptoms will last, unwilling to care about who they really are, and unable to make decisions for themselves....
This was the most informative video I found on this topic that did not explain the scientific aspects of this process as much, but rather spoke about the practice from the viewpoint of Haitian people, except for the last couple minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpcUnf5k8g4
This post intrigued me, it get me wondering who, if anyone, made this into some type of scientific study and what motivation, other than cheap labor, could be behind this zombification. I found that Dr.Wade Davis, an ethnobiologist from Harvard, made a trip out to Haiti in 1989 to study the zombie-making legend. He found that the zombification process required both Haiti’s own cultural phenomena and the use of drugs. Neither culture nor drugs alone could create the zombies. The drugs used to make an individual dead were a mixture of toad skin and puffer fish, which contained the TTX. After the zombie is dug out of the ground they are made mad by being fed datura, which breaks all links with reality and erases any recent memories. Datura contains chemicals which act as powerful hallucinogens and can cause memory loss, paralysis and, in some cases, death.
ReplyDeleteAn especially interesting find was the motivation behind the zombification process. Zombification was used as a means of maintaining order and control in local communities. It was not just a witch doctor practice but closely regulated by the secret Bizango societies. The Bizango societies were a totally secret and hidden government distinct from that of the surface of Haitian society. Dr. Davis also found zombification not to be a random occurrence but the ultimate punishment to a perpetrator of Bizango society laws. Haiti’s early history is rooted in secret societies many of which used local poisons as a means of social control.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/12/09/1260445.htm
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/davis1.htm
When I visited Japan, some of my friends told me about “puffer fish zombies”. Tied to legends and traditions of good luck, puffer fish is a Japanese specialty. Puffer fish contains the same chemical, TTX, which the Haitians use in the zombification process. Trace amounts of the chemical in the fish cause a tingling sensation on the tongue and lips and an overall feeling of intoxication. However, only 2% of chefs can correctly prepare the delicacy. As a result, some individuals die from cardiac arrest every year as a result of incorrectly prepared puffer fish. Some fall into comas, only to be awoken a few days later – for this reason, those afflicted with “puffer fish poison” are kept from burial for three days, just in case they wake up. Today, eating puffer fish is seen as a challenge of luck and fate – one I’m certainly not going to risk anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteReference:
Costando, Mo. (24 May, 2008). Neurophilosophy: Voodoo, Zombies, and Puffer Fish. [Web log comment] Retrieved from: http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/05/24/voodoo-zombies-the-puffer-fish/