MindFreedom International Statement on the Rise of Brain Altering Technologies Today

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[MF-USA] MindFreedom International Statement on the Rise of Brain

Altering Technologies Today

 

[Please feel free to forward -- your comments, suggestions,

additions, feedback are welcome. This sums up information we've

provided to other media, in response to a request from a sponsor

group who is being approached by a reporter on this topic. Feel free

to forward.]

 

17 October 2006

 

MindFreedom International Statement on the Rise of Brain Altering

Technologies Today

 

by David Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International

 

Because of anecdotal reports, medical articles and news stories we've

seen this past decade, MindFreedom activists are concerned that the

amount of psychosurgery is again on the rise internationally in the

21st century. Since the decline of psychosurgery in the 1950's and

'60's, psychosurgeons have generally kept a low profile, and this may

be why accurate statistics have been difficult to obtain.

 

Major media (Utne, Mother Jones, etc.) have definitely noted the

worrisome emergence of newer 'brain altering technologies' -- such as

varieties of stimulus implants -- that appear to us meet the accepted

definition of psychosurgery: destruction of healthy brain tissue to

change behavior.

 

There are also new non-surgical but profoundly intrusive procedures

such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) that are

currently being tested on human subjects, and that raise similar

issues such as a concern about brain damage.

 

Brain altering technology is brain altering technology, and ought to

raise a red flag when it comes to bioethics.

 

Also, while some media focus on this fascinating subject of brain

altering technology, the same media is ignoring the elephant in the

living room here:

 

It's very important to note that in the past decade, mainstream

medical evidence has emerged that long-term high-dosage use of the

main psychiatric drug prescribed since the 1950's for people

diagnosed schizophrenic -- neuroleptics -- is linked to structural

brain changes so severe that these drug-induced changes are visible

in brain scans, including actual shrinkage of the frontal lobes,

actual less gray matter in the brain! That phenomenon has been

confirmed by animal studies and autopsies. Even though the medical

research community is discussing this emerging alarming evidence, the

public, media and decision-makers have generally not been informed.

Instead some mental health professionals have been side-tracked with

debates about whether mental health problems themselves are related

to brain changes, which is a totally different issue.

 

It's time that society called the prescription of long-term high-

dosage neuroleptics and similar drugs exactly and precisely what they

are: chemical lobotomies.

 

Thus, the University of Pennsylvania experiments with implantable

disks that can time release neuroleptics for a year to increase

compliance bring up similar ethical issues as psychosurgery.

 

And public debates about the forced administration of neuroleptics

are especially hollow if the issue of drug-induced brain damage

continues to be ignored.

 

There is no doubt that psychiatric brain-altering is on the rise

internationally, and even threatens to globalize into poor and

developing countries, through programs that spread the use of

neuroleptics there.

 

And there is no doubt that once more there is a public debate about

psychiatric procedures, but once more those on the receiving end, and

their organized groups, tend not to be heard.

 

We call for urgent attention by everyone in society to the rise of

brain-altering methods in psychiatry today. Never again! Please truly

listen to those who have been harmed by psychiatric procedures in the

past, and to critics of the mental health profession, because it may

be you or your loved ones who are on the receiving end of these

technologies in the near future.

 

David Oaks, Director

MindFreedom International

454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284

Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA

 

http://www.mindfreedom.org

email: oaks

office phone: (541) 345-9106

fax: (541) 345-3737

member services toll free in USA: 1-877-MAD-PRIDE or 1-877-623-7743

 

United Action for Human Rights in Mental Health.

 

join here: http://www.mindfreedom.org/join.shtml

 

MindFreedom International is an independent

non-profit uniting 100 sponsor groups

to win human rights & alternatives in mental health.

Accredited by the United Nations as a

Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with

Consultative Roster Status.

 

" Human salvation lies in the hands of the

creatively maladjusted. " - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

 

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