+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Physiology & Pharmacology (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-82.html)
+--- Thread: Flickering acts like psychedelic drugs + Scammers inject thousands with fake vaccines (/thread-10589.html)
Flickering acts like psychedelic drugs + Scammers inject thousands with fake vaccines - C C - Jul 6, 2021
Scammers inject thousands of people with fake vaccines
https://futurism.com/neoscope/scammers-inject-thousands-fake-vaccines
INTRO: Police in India recently broke up a massive ring of scammers who injected thousands of people with fake COVID-19 vaccines — and collected the profits from the worthless shots.
The scammers injected about 2,500 victims with salt water instead of the coronavirus vaccines they promised, making off with about $28,000, CNN reports. The scammers ran over a dozen fake vaccination sites in and around Mumbai as they took advantage of a terrified public that trusted them to keep them safe.
Shockingly, genuine health care workers appear to have participated in the scheme. “We have arrested doctors,” senior Mumbai police official Vishal Thakur told CNN. “They were using a hospital which was producing the fake certificates, vials, syringes.” (MORE)
Flickering lights can trigger altered states of consciousness similar to psychedelics
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/flickering-lights-can-trigger-altered-states-of-consciousness-similar-to-psychedelics/
EXCERPTS: In the study published in the journal PLOS ONE, the authors point out that early psychedelic studies conducted in the 1960s used flickering lights to enhance the effects of mescaline and magic mushrooms, and that similar methods involving flashing light arrays are sometimes used recreationally to generate altered states of consciousness. They decided to investigate whether the practice has the capacity to trigger the neuronal mechanisms underlying the effects of psychedelics, with a view to creating novel mental health therapies without relying on the use of drugs.
[...] they found that flickering lights generate a degree of “vigilance reduction” – which refers to the experience of “clouded consciousness” – that is comparable to a low dose of ketamine.
Furthermore, participants reported seeing “elemental imagery” hallucinations, consisting of “colorful, dynamically changing fractal structures,” that were similar in strength to those typically produced by an average recreational dose of LSD.
Summing up this finding, the study authors state that “our results demonstrate that the visual effects of flickering light stimulation, in some aspects, are rated to be similarly strong as the effects induced by certain psychedelic substances.” However, they go on to explain that “the induced spectrum of phenomena is rather limited to visual effects, while other aspects of alterations in consciousness are less robustly induced.” (MORE - details)