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

TESTIMONY OF JOHN M. FRIEDBERG, M.D., NEUROLOGIST, BEFORE THE MENTAL HEALTH COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY
“My name is John Friedberg. I am a board certified neurologist practicing in Berkeley, California.

I was born in Far Rockaway (NYC) in 1942, graduated Lawrence High School, Yale University and the University of Rochester School of Medicine and for the past twenty years I’ve been seeing patients with every conceivable neurologic problem, from headaches to Huntington’s, in my office and in hospitals.

I am in good standing with my hospitals, professional societies and licensing boards and I’m proud to say I’ve never been successfully sued.

In 1975 I published my book “Shock Treatment Is Not Good For Your Brain” and in 1979 “Shock Treatment, Brain Damage and Memory Loss,” a peer reviewed article in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

I do not believe in mental illness. Depression is no more “the same as diabetes” than heartbreak is the same as a heart attack.

I do not believe in hypothetical diseases of the mind but there is no mistaking damage to the brain. Psychiatric drugs and electroshock inflict real injury in the name of treating fictive maladies. Paul Henri Thomas has Tardive Dyskinesia and heptatitis from psychiatric drugs and amnesia from the ECT.

…..ECT isn’t back – it never went away. It’s more common than appendectomy.
What has happened is that it’s advocates have grown more arrogant and the number of patients forced to undergo ECT against their will is increasing.

This was brought to public attention by Paul Henri Thomas fighting for his life and his mind at Pilgrim State Hospital on Long Island. Over the past two years he has been subjected to 60 shocks and a judge just ordered up 40 more. The newspapers state the Mr. Thomas was born in Haiti, emigrated from oppression and was granted American citizenship.

To be held down, drugged and forcibly administered convulsive dose after convulsive dose of electroshock to the head: can anyone think of a greater assault on a human being’s rights – short of death – in the whole world? And it’s happening here in the land of the free. That’s not acceptable.

We have had 60 years of poignant testimony from eloquent victims of electroshock. Ernest Hemingway complained it ruined his memory and put him out of business. He killed himself within weeks of concluding a second course of ECT. George Orwell ends 1984 with his protagonist being forced to love Big Brother on an electroshock table.

I urge you to declare a moratorium on electroconvulsive therapy until it can be proven safe by evidence, not proclamation.

I urge you to declare a moratorium on electroconvulsive therapy until patients can be guaranteed free and informed choice.

Thank you.”

Electroshock is being increasingly used around the country to “treat” the mentally ill.
Jenny Hatch

HOW PSYCHIATRY IS MAKING DRUG ADDICTS OUT OF AMERICA’S SCHOOL CHILDREN
Dennis H. Clarke

“You will learn that one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for children in America is chemically and neurologically equivalent to cocain in its effects on the human body. You will no doubt find this information startling. We have also found it so.

It is not always easy to confront evil. Nonetheless, the evil being done to millions of children in America needs to be confronted and ended, no matter who stands behind or profits from the evil deed of making drug addicts out of America’s children.”

This paper was written in 1995, over 12 years ago, and things have only gotten worse in America.
Parents, Please get into natural family living and stop the drugging of children!
Jenny Hatch

I’m wondering how much longer this cycle of put a drug on the market, kill lots of people, pull a drug from the market…..will play out in our society before somebody says….ENOUGH!
FDA Scientist Says Pull Avandia
Jenny Hatch

Anti-Psychotic Use up in Children
Jenny Hatch