VerbaluceTM on Escape from Spiderhead

(No, I did not actually take non-existent drugs to make me talk a lot.)

1. Major human rights violation, whoa.

2. Is this a business? The TMs make it seem like a business, but it's involved with the legal system. Supposedly Jeff's mom bought him a spot in this place ("She'd spent her life savings to get me out of real jail and in here.") The other experiments seem relatively benign, but no. If I was Jeff's mom I would be pissed.

...Is this government-endorsed, then? Who voted to let this happen? Was it a program that started out benevolent and turned into killing test subjects with suicide drugs? Are there other places like this? Who supervises it?

Are the drugs going to be marketed to the general public? Will they be strictly controlled by the government? Most of the memorable ones really could never be used in any ethical way (forcing and then erasing love, suicide-inducing, obedience drugs) though the events of the story make it pretty clear that ethics really aren't a question. But what about the nature-loving drugs, or the ones Jeff mentions in passing (being able to stand up at a cash register, though that seems pretty weird, or suddenly being good at math.) Or even VerbaluceTM-- there might be some actually good uses for some of these drugs, though I'm sure they come with a slew of terrible side-effects that utterly negates their usefulness. Still. What's the plan for these drugs? Who will they be sold to (the government? Is this the deal for allowing such obvious disregard for any sort of human rights issues with the prisoners-- miracle drugs in exchange for overlooking the atrocities committed to make them?)

3. Suicide drugs! Darkenfloxx doesn't sound ominous enough. It's about halfway there.

4. They say they have to watch Jeff's reaction to Rachel being Darkenfloxxed because of the scientific process, but this is so unscientific. They don't tell Jeff what Heather did, but they do tell him about Rachel. That's already enough to skew the results. Add in having watched the previous subject die horribly, and, well, your experiment is already screwed. Even if they had forced him to do it, his thoughts would already be different from, I don't know, the traumatizing experience of Heather's death?

And since Heather is already dead, and Rachel possibly would have been too, they couldn't test this again with the other test subjects, Keith and Rogan. They could have used a lower dose (still horrible, but not actually kill them) but they had to wait ten minutes when she was clearly going to kill herself?

These scientists are idiots.

5. The obedience drug requires extra paperwork to be used, but not the suicide-inducing one? Who made this system and what was wrong with them.

6.  What are BonvivTM, BlissTymeTM, and SpeedErUpTM? Okay, it's pretty obvious what kind of drugs they are, but are they based on, say, opiates? Cocaine or weed? Something else entirely? (Also, why do I care?)

7. Mick, Todd, Karen, Lisa, Phoebe, I'm sorry. Your dad is an emotionally manipulative asshole.

I'm sure that if there was a word limit for this blog post I would have exceeded it spectacularly, but as far as I know there isn't, so I will just leave my rambling off here.