name: Richard Winkel
email: rich@math.missouri.edu

Editors,

Given Daniel Smith's sanguine description of ECT on a drug-paralyzed
and unconscious man, one can imagine how he might report on an
execution by lethal injection, where sedatives and paralytic agents
are also administered before the actual "treatment".  Obviously
the immobility of someone undergoing ECT demonstrates nothing if
the patient cannot move.  The question remains: can grand mal
seizures cause brain damage?  In the case of grand mal seizures
caused by epilepsy the answer is an unequivocal "yes".  It is
therefore incumbent on psychiatry to demonstrate why this is not
also the case with ECT, particularly since it adds a substantial
extra punch:  the shock itself, whos intensity (10,000 times normal
brain electrical potential) has no natural neurological parallel.

But psychiatry is ill prepared to provide such assurances, since
41% of APA members polled in 1978 (the last year for which data is
publically available) reported that they believed ECT causes brain
damage.  Symptoms of brain damage include epilepsy, cerebral edema,
amnesia, apathy, difficulty in concentrating, euphoria, giddiness,
emotional and mental bluntedness, denial of personal problems and
increased suggestibility, symptoms which have all been reported in
ECT survivors.  E. Cameron's horrific experiments on unsuspecting
"patients" in the CIA's MKULTRA mind control project, passingly
glossed over in Smith's article, quite conclusively demonstrate
the permanently destructive power of ECT.  (Cameron was, by the
way, a world-reknowned psychiatrist and president of the World
Psychiatric Association at the time)  Finally, psychiatrists' open,
explicit and systematic use of ECT to erase the memories and
personalities of unhappily married women as recently as the 1970's
brings their motives and credibility on this issue into question.
(see Roche Lab's "Frontiers in Psychiatry" Nov 1 and Nov 15, 1972)

Despite psychiatry's ardent lobbying efforts with their friends at
the FDA, ECT machines are still classified as a type III medical
device, meaning that its safety has not been proven.  Shock was
already in use when the FDA started regulating medical devices,
and so was "grandfathered-in".  It's doubtful that running house
current through the brain would be considered medicine if it were
introduced today.

Thus we are left with the subjective first-hand experiences of
devastated survivors who have nothing to gain and much to lose in
"coming out" with their grievances, vs the purportedly scientific
second-guessing of economically biased and financially liable
doctors, who freely admit their ignorance of how ECT works[*].

([*] Here's a theory for them: they are equating certain symptoms
of brain damage (euphoria, giddiness, apathy and denial of personal
problems) with an improvement in the the emotional state of the
patient.  The extreme suggestibility induced by recent shock also
serves to make the patient more manageable, which is just the icing
on the cake for psychiatrists)

Luckily Smith has found experts to to lead the way out of this
quandary.  Fink and Sackheim's dedication to scientific objectivity
are legendary: their evangelization of the "1 in 200" figure for
the probability of amnesia from ECT helped make it gospel truth in
the psychiatric establishment and on ECT consent forms for nearly
a decade, until Fink was recently forced to admit to the Washington
Post that it was no more than an "impressionistic number" without
a basis in any studies.  Perhaps if they had read the Houston
Chronicle of March 7, 1995 they would recall that this is in fact
the DEATH RATE from ECT, caused by hemorrhagic stroke.  Normally
our high priests of mental health protect the public from such
emotionally disturbing data, but a new Texas law, still unique in
the USA, now requires psychiatrists to report deaths from ECT.

Largely because of a few "experts" like Fink and Sackheim, psychiatry
has the plausible "scientific" deniability it needs to continue a
lucrative practice which nearly 1/2 of psychiatrists believe to
cause brain damage, (in accordance with well established animal
and human research findings) which has destroyed the lives of an
unknown number of innocent and trusting victims, (unknown because
outside of Texas, psychiatry jealously guards its hospital records
from independent researchers) some of whom have had the courage
and stamina to speak out despite having to relive their trauma and
loss while enduring psychiatric patronization and stigmatization.
Predictably, their impassioned pleas have been systematically
ignored by these self-appointed enforcers of "behavioral health".
In any other branch of "medicine", malpractice lawyers would be
beating down the door to have at this well-fattened turkey.

But that's the beauty of the psychiatric scam: it is virtually
impossible to successfully sue an abusive shrink, in part because
they alone have access to the data which would prove or disprove
their malfeasance.  As long as credulous journalists, judges and
juries trust psychiatry to police itself, the minds and lives of
society's most vulnerable people will continue to be devastated by
this barbaric quackery, while the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators
of the allegedly "past abuses" Smith refers to will continue into
the future, and a gullible and ignorant public will be reassured
that the fox really is working for the hens.

Of course it's easier to trust the "experts" and presume that
psychiatry is immune from conflicts of interest and institutional
corruption.  One might as well trust that G.W. Bush won the Florida
vote, if only because the alternative is too troubling to contemplate.