In what amounts to a betrayal of its mandate to protect the American people from harmful products, the FDA is allied with the interests of the shock machine manufacturers and organized psychiatry. They have never independently tested the electroshock device for safety and efficacy, as required by law. The "science" that is cited in support of this quackery derives solely from electroshock manufacturers and electroshock proponents. This is not officially seen as improper bias because the American government serves industry, not its citizenry, the main source of its funding, as you well know -- industry and business are always favored by tax breaks. Politicians and tenured bureaucrats appear to consider their ties to industry more important than accountability to their constituency. You can write the FDA and demand to know why they allow a treatment with such a high percentage of harmful outcomes to continue. No other treatment in medicine has this distinction. Many treatments have been abandoned in the past when a very small amount of people were harmed. Truly scientific studies were done in the 1940's and 1950's that unequivocably showed measurable brain damage to result from ECT in a very high percentage of subjects. These studies are dismissed as "old" while contrary to the lies they may tell you, electroshock machines have only increased in power since that time. Hence, the potential for permanent memory loss, cognitive deficits, and brain damage is greater with today's machines, not less.
The FDA's Division of General and Restorative Devices (DGRD) has oversight (scant as it is) over the ECT machine.
Janet L. Scudiero is the contact there.
Her phone is:
(301) 594-1184
Fax: (301) 594-2358
Address:
Janet L. Scudiero
DGRD
9200 Corporate Blvd, HFZ-410
Rockville MD 20850
One can also post a comment online at:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfDSMA/consumer-form.cfm