ACTION ALERT!!!!!

One of Capitalism's cash cows, nothing democratic about it, is the practice of damaging brains to "save the person" as they would have us believe. Really it is a tool for the lazy psychiatrist and their supporting institution to make a wad of easy money. Below is an action alert writtien by long-time anti-ECT campaigner Linda Andre, author of Doctors of Deception. Without overwhelming public protest, the FDA, a lobbiest-controlled 'public' government bureaucracy if there ever was one, will certify the electroschock machine safer than a toaster. Only this is no mere piece of toast, this is people's heads their cooking up.

The FDA Wants to Declare Shock (ECT) Machines Safe Without a Safety Investigation. TELL THEM NO!

The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of regulating medical
devices just as it does drugs, including the machines used to give shock
treatment. But it’s not doing its job. It has allowed these machines to be
used on millions of patients over the past generation without requiring any
evidence whatsoever that shock treatment is safe or effective! This is so
even though shock machines are Class III---high risk---devices, which by law
are supposed to be investigated by clinical trials as thoroughly as new
drugs and devices just coming onto the market. But because of intense
lobbying by the American Psychiatric Association---which claims the devices
are safe but opposes an investigation---the FDA has disregarded its own law.
(For the full story of how shock survivors have fought for a scientific
safety investigation of ECT for the past 25 years, see the new book Doctors
of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment by
Linda Andre.)

In April 2009---30 years after it first ruled the devices high-risk
and named brain damage and memory loss as risks of the treatment---the FDA
belatedly announced it would call on the manufacturers of the devices to
provide evidence of safety and efficacy. The deadline for submissions has
passed, but the manufacturers have not conducted any clinical trials,
claiming they cannot afford them. They simply point to the opinions of shock
doctors (including those who have financial interests in the device
companies) as evidence that shock is safe.

The FDA is now supposed to require the ECT device to undergo the
rigorous PreMarket Approval process (PMA) that is required of new devices,
including clinical safety trials. But the FDA could have called for this
investigation any time in the past 30 years and has steadfastly refused to
do so. It has never wavered from its intention (as stated in 1990) to
declare the shock machine safe, and downclassify it to the low-risk Class
II, without scientific evidence of its safety. As a Class II device, the
shock machine would never have to go through the PMA process. After all, if
a PMA showed shock to be unsafe, the FDA would have to take shock machines
off the market, and it knows that the American Psychiatric Association would
never allow that.

The FDA has opened up a new docket for public comments on the device.
If we don’t write in, they will almost certainly reclassify. Comments will
be accepted up through January 8, 2010. Do you think shock is safe? Have
you evidence you want FDA to consider, including your personal experience?
Write now, before it's too late! Here's how:

To comment electronically, use this link: http://bit.ly/fda-ect
Click on "submit comment."

The FDA has said that they will also carefully consider reports of
adverse shock experiences. If you have had shock you should make a report to
this database (your name will be kept confidential). Use this link:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/medwatch-online.htm
All written comments must contain the docket number and should be
submitted to:

Food and Drug Administration
Dockets Management Branch (HFA-305)
5630 Fishers Lane, Room 10-61
Rockville, MD 20852
Re: Docket #FDA 2009-N-0392

Anything you have to say about the safety and efficacy (or lack thereof)
is relevant. Or, consider making the following brief statement. And tell
others to write!

.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Food and Drug Administration, Dockets Management Branch (HFA-305), 5630
Fishers Lane, Room 1061, Rockville, MD 20852
Re: Docket #FDA-2009-N-0392

The undersigned opposes the reclassification of the ECT device to Class II
by the FDA in the absence of adequate scientific evidence of its safety, and
asks the agency to call for PreMarket Approval Applications for the device.

Name:
____________________________________________________________________________
Address:
____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________
Signature:
____________________________________________________________________________

[End of Post]

Now, for something not so completely different (but somewhat un-current), the original home page of Stopshrinks.org continues below the ever-so-basic horizontal rule line!

Search WWW
Search www.stopshrinks.org

Mainstream mental "therapy" is no magic carpet ride. Those who employ and profit from this system use measures subtler than mere brooms [but with the same effect] to corner their living commodies for permanent tiering as the underclass. I'd rather be whipped with a broom anyday than be smothered and stifled with brain-damaging drugs, electroshock, and all the ensuing disadvantage and discrimination. Under the weight of the system's heirarchy of priviledge, so-called mental patients are literally swept under the carpet of society, disqualified from constitutional rights protections because of diagnoses based upon no objective medical tests whatsoever. A class of disenfranchised, doped-up slaves to perpetuate the red carpet ways of their masters.

If credentialed "mental health" professionals can't tell a live patient from a dead one, how can they presume to conclude and believe a head of another contains an ailing brain just by looking at it? Perhaps what's festering insentiently is behind their own eyes and not at the other extent of their vision. And what an abysmally poor quality of vision it is. Mental health workers visited patient without realizing she was dead.

The establishment would designate all human experience not first passed through the filter of elite analysis (read censorship/the corporate media/"well-educated experts") to be "anecdotal" and of no consequence. Misinformation is but another commodity to be manipulated, in the for-profit zeitgeist. To this end: more accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of the autocratic few. Truth takes a poor last place. A political situation more dangerous to personal liberty, health and happiness — not to mention the safety of the entire globe and all life on it — would be difficult to imagine. Even Greens think human rights abuses are OK if the means used for perpetrating them have a medical cant to them. Do not let yourself automatically deny the evidence — presented on these pages — of gross human rights abuse common to, and indeed a very important part of, the arsenal of control employed throughout the "mental health" system.

HISTORY OF THE FRAUD OF BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY by Dr. Fred Baughman. (This link will take you to his ADHD Fraud site.)

Fast for Freedom in Mental Health .

Remember psychiatric patient's civil rights.

No Proof Mental Illness Rooted in Biology.

"It seems to me that to reduce other people to the status of depersonalized objects is of no help to them whatsoever." Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science.

Mistaken for a Schizophrenic.

What is NORMAL? Everything unexceptional. What is ABNORMAL? Everything exceptional. Mouth Magazine explores the roots of our reverence of unimaginative models of conformity.

Mental Illness On Trial

The Rodney Yoder Story

Parity, is it really?

6/9/02 Boston Globe: Forced Medication is Inhumane

On confused psychiatric theory and medical fascism.

Enter the office of Dr.Brutal, Psychiatrist, if you dare.

Sugar pills tie with "antidepressants" for therapeutic effect, from the Washington Post.

MadNation has made a comeback. Its new domain is www.madnation.cc.

For many more articles and links, visit my former site, the Anti-psychiatry Reading Room, admittedly, as with the above MadNation, not a place for the latest news. I highly recommend SCI's MindFreedom for the latest developing news.

Thomas J. Moore's Briefing on Drugs for Depression.

A long-time shrink says, "Stopping over-medication should be the mental health movement's first task."

Are personal and emotional problems diseases?

State medical boards have the power to revoke psychiatrist's license to practice. Do not hesitate to make complaints about incompetent, unethical, or abusive psychiatrists (I dare say: the majority.). This page gives a listing of all licensing boards for the 50 US states .

Prescription For Scandal: Biological Psychiatry's Faustian Pact

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A Word, or Several, from the Webmaster

I may be an official paranoid, but I truly believe that Peak Oil, which is probably here now, means the end of the world as we know it -- including the shrinks ("yay!" for that much). Oil is more than the gas in your car. If you're reading this on a computer, you're looking at it. But I don't advise burning it to heat your house when the natural gas stops flowing. As oil becomes more expensive, it will not be feasible, even, to replace our auto and truck fleets with higher-mileage alternates -- it takes the energy from 90 barrels of oil to produce your average car. Furthermore, the world will only support one billion people without our petroleum-dependent agriculture. There are over 6 billion people alive today. Go do the math. Darwin is resurrecting in his tomb. FYI, 'newbies,' Peak Oil not when oil runs out, it is when demand exceeds supply. The latest forcast for when that will happen is THIS winter. Hardly anyone realizes what that means. For starters, the end-use prices will skyrocket (picture gas, picture FOOD). Our monetary/credit sytem is pegged to an ever-increasing supply of cheap energy, and won't function as it has in energy scarcity. So do forgive me if I must necessarily turn my attention towards trying to grapple with issues outside the mental "health" system. If you want to email me, you can do so at: REMOVEcal@stopshrinks.org