Electricity is a strange capacity to use on the body. In Psychiatry there is ECT, Electro Convulsive Therapy. It has been used for a long time and continues to be available for severe depression.
BOSTON —
A woman who settled a lawsuit (click here) against a Massachusetts school for
disabled children that administers shock treatment therapy stepped up efforts
to end the practice on Wednesday, delivering a petition signed by more than
223,000 people urging state lawmakers to ban the treatment.
Cheryl McCollins of Brooklyn, N.Y., shed tears and hugged an
autistic woman who showed up at the Massachusetts State House to support the
initiative targeting the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton. McCollins joined a
former teacher at the school who authored the online petition, which describes
the shock therapy as an “inhumane practice that the United Nations considers
torture.”…
The treatment at Judge Rotenberg Center has been issued by judicial order. I would suggest an attorney(s) do some Pro Se work for the disabled in treatment and seek a redress of those orders. Treatment 20 years old is very old and even more current patients will benefit from new therapies and medications, so they all should be reviewed by the court. Perhaps even as as a class.
One of the profound problems with releasing patients from this therapy will have to be a Step-Down from the current regime. These folks have been under this therapy for something like 20 years or more and still wear backpacks to supply shock to the skin. I have no doubt there is brain damage from the electro-shock, as the young man who was subject of the recent lawsuit, was catatonic the same day he started the therapy. He obviously has some brain cells damaged. To some extent this therapy seeks to do damage and inhibit a runaway nervous system from functioning.
The picture to the right is after treatment.
This is the study and it shows concrete and measurable results.
Treatmentof Life-Threatening Vomiting and Rumination with Contingent Electric Shock (click here)
Robert W. Worsham, Matthew L. Israel, Robert E. von Heyn, and Daniel A. Connolly
Behavior Research Institute
This paper describes the treatment of life-threatening ruminating and vomiting in a 12-year-old boy with profound mental retardation and pervasive developmental disorder. Body weight and behavioral data are presented for baseline and behavior modification treatment conditions over a period of two-and-a-half years. Treatment conditions which were held constant throughout included positive reinforcement schedules (DRO, DRA), a functional communication system, and skills training…
The treatment at Judge Rotenberg Center has been issued by judicial order. I would suggest an attorney(s) do some Pro Se work for the disabled in treatment and seek a redress of those orders. Treatment 20 years old is very old and even more current patients will benefit from new therapies and medications, so they all should be reviewed by the court. Perhaps even as as a class.
One of the profound problems with releasing patients from this therapy will have to be a Step-Down from the current regime. These folks have been under this therapy for something like 20 years or more and still wear backpacks to supply shock to the skin. I have no doubt there is brain damage from the electro-shock, as the young man who was subject of the recent lawsuit, was catatonic the same day he started the therapy. He obviously has some brain cells damaged. To some extent this therapy seeks to do damage and inhibit a runaway nervous system from functioning.
The picture to the right is after treatment.
This is the study and it shows concrete and measurable results.
Treatmentof Life-Threatening Vomiting and Rumination with Contingent Electric Shock (click here)
Robert W. Worsham, Matthew L. Israel, Robert E. von Heyn, and Daniel A. Connolly
Behavior Research Institute
This paper describes the treatment of life-threatening ruminating and vomiting in a 12-year-old boy with profound mental retardation and pervasive developmental disorder. Body weight and behavioral data are presented for baseline and behavior modification treatment conditions over a period of two-and-a-half years. Treatment conditions which were held constant throughout included positive reinforcement schedules (DRO, DRA), a functional communication system, and skills training…
Electricity is used as treatment in the body elsewhere. Electrolysis, cardioversion and a very sophisticated intervention call Electrophysiology (click here) of the heart to stop nervous system pathways of the cardiac muscle. It is called ablation. The abated pathway stops causing dysrhythmias (click here) that are at the very least troublesome and can be fatal. People also use pacemakers. So the idea of applying electricity to a human condition is not foreign, but, the benefits are definitely dose related.
There is also the issue of Stun Guns in police work. We know there was a young 13 year old, I believe it was Florida, who was unruly and the police applied a stun gun to stop him. He eventually would develop a seizure disorder from what I remember.
There are a lot of things unusual about genetic development and sometimes children are born with what appears to be hopeless conditions. All these doctors are guilty of is trying something that would bring about life and hopefully function beyond what already existed. The study here applied other therapies as well as electro-shock. Doses of electricity that cause catatonia in one day is far too heavy a treatment.
We are entering an age of concern with these therapies as the number of autistic children grows. Researchers believe there is a relationship between a mother's weight and her child's development of autism. I think it needs more research.
The relationship, no doubt, is obvious, BUT, and it is a very big but; the correlation has to do with the development of the nervous system and the interruption of development which may be somewhere in myelin development. The myelin continues development for the first year of a child's life and detection early will, even in utero, be beneficial. Amniocentesis will probably be an option for obese women during pregnancy and/or a nutrition regime that contains excessive weight gain during pregnancy.
The thing is obesity often is a problem at the onset of pregnancy, so is it the obesity itself that is the problem or the food consumption. At the onset, as there is evidence of the connection, it is reasonable to assume both are at play; hence study groups without any danger to the fetus. Not to say there won't be the usual miscarriages of the fetus in a study group, but, it will take data collection and following both the mother and child for a period of time.
There may even be a profound connection between the food consumption of the mother and specific building blocks or amino acids (click here) that construct the nervous system in utero. It might be the amino acids of the DNA aren't in sufficient amounts to connect the nervous tissue sufficiently and some spines (of autistic) may have short circuits as AVAILABLE amino acids are substituted for what sincerely belongs there. I personally believe it is the nutrition supplying the amino acids that is the problem and not so much the obesity. I believe obesity provides a unique character of starvation and/or malnutrition in the USA. If a mason doesn't have sufficient bricks to build the house he will substitute substandard materials to deliver the goods. I think the human body and very sticky genetic material has the same capacity.
Basically, more research needs to be done.
But, considering what we are finding in our society about disorders in children, including dietary disorders has to be handled with a goal of 'quality of life' at the end of the rainbow. This electro-shock therapy will disappear, it is already illegal in Massachusetts for new cases. We need to be a better society to find what works and not one that simply asks for excuses to say 'we have accomplished a cure' when in fact the cure is inhumane. We have to determine if this treatment is sincerely effective, but, should the patient be conscious at all when and if this is the only path of hope.
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