Ban Electroshock Therapy
ECT: Brutality Prescribed
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Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Dangerously Unregulated Procedure with Crippling Side Effects
Electroconvulsive therapy gives a brutal shock of up to 460 volts of electricity to a patient’s brain to induce a grand mal seizure.
This “cure” originated in 1938 when psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti observed pigs being electroshocked to make them more docile in preparation for their slaughter. Today patients are anesthetized and their bodies paralyzed before the electroshock so that the violence of the seizure no longer risks crushing the patients’ teeth or breaking their vertebrae.
Every other doctor on the planet, of course, is trying to prevent seizures, not cause them.
ECT Is Based on a False Psychiatric Assumption
Psychiatrists still have the idea that schizophrenia can be cured by this barbaric procedure. More than one hundred thousand Americans undergo ECT every year and risk its crippling side effects of debilitating memory loss and dangerous cardiac conditions.
The FDA has turned a blind eye on ECT. They call ECT the “practice of medicine” and claim they do not rule on that. Consequently, no valid, placebo-based clinical trials have been done for the last forty years to asses either ECT’s safety or its effectiveness.
The ECT Industry Has Virtually No Oversight
The practice of ECT therefore remains virtually unregulated. It is performed in secrecy, well removed from the eyes of the public or any humanitarian watchdogs or whistleblowers. The ECT device itself is only allowed to be used on patients with extreme catatonia or severe and unresponsive mental disorders. Its electric shock can be given to those so labeled, but of course that label then renders them “incompetent” and so they are not subject to normal informed consent laws.
Is money — and not help — the motive here?
Institutions and practitioners delivering ECT in America are reimbursed 1 billion dollars
annually, mostly by insurance companies and the government for their use of this dangerous procedure.
Only a Legislative Ban of ECT Will Protect the Public
It is time to ban its use until full, scientifically valid clinical trials can be conducted to assess its safety and effectiveness.
This website is dedicated to providing you with the facts that support that recommendation.
It is time to ban its use until full, scientifically valid clinical trials can be conducted to assess its safety and effectiveness.
This website is dedicated to providing you with the facts that support that recommendation.