THE ELECTRIC SHOCKS MACHINE MANUFACTURER WAS A PSYCHIATRY PROFESSOR

“When medical students learn about shock therapy, they turn to the only textbook on the subject: Electroconvulsive Therapy, published by Oxford University Press. Richard Abrams, a professor of psychiatry at the Chicago Medical School, writes that shock therapy is proven safe and effective for depression and other problems, even in children and the elderly.

He advises that shock should be considered as the first treatment given, not as the last resort. He concludes with an attack on doctors who criticize shock treatment and attaches a form to have patients sign when they consent to shock therapy.

But Abrams doesn’t tell the medical students one thing: He owns Somatics Inc., one of the nation’s two shock machine manufacturers.

He didn’t tell his publisher, either.

“Wow,” says Joan Bossert, executive editor of Oxford University Press. “I did not know that.” She would have had him disclose that in the book’s preface, she says. “I really wish he’d told us, but it doesn’t take away from his expertise,” she says. Neither did Abrams disclose his financial interest in the academic journal Psychiatric Clinics in September 1994, when he wrote an upbeat article on shock titled, “The Treatment That Will Not Die.”

In some recent articles, Abrams disclosed that he’s a “director” of Somatics. But readers weren’t told that he is also president and owns the company with shock researcher Conrad Swartz, a University of South Carolina psychiatry professor.

Abrams says it’s ridiculous to think his ownership of a shock machine company may create a conflict of interest.”

Conflict of Interest