Nervous Much?

Medicine prize launches Nobel season next week

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The Nobel prize for medicine, called by past winners both an honor and a distraction from research, heralds the start next week of the century-old season of awards founded in the will of the inventor of dynamite.

The winner of the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.3 million) is to be announced on Monday, October 3 at 0930 GMT.

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AVOIDING CONTROVERSY

The prize-giving Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute of medical research has tended to avoid controversy in its awards -- a rare exception being the case of Portuguese scientist Egas Moniz, the inventor of the lobotomy.

U.S. relatives of patients who had treatment, which sought to calm mentally ill patients by severing nerve fibres in the brain, have demanded the prize be withdrawn. They say it led to injury or death for their kin.
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Strange but True

Woman awarded $100,000 for CIA-funded electroshock
Thu, 10 Jun 2004

MONTREAL - A Montreal woman who underwent intense electroshock treatment in a program funded by the CIA 50 years ago has been awarded $100,000.

Gail Kastner was given massive electroshock therapy to treat depression in 1953 at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. She was told on Wednesday of the compensation award.

She was left out of a federal compensation package in 1994 because her treatment was deemed to have been less intense than that of other victims of the experiments. Her treatment was also found to have had fewer long-term effects.

A Federal Court judge reversed that ruling, and awarded her the same amount Ottawa gave to 77 others as compensation for their treatment.

There were 253 claims rejected.

Dr. Ewan Cameron, who was director of the Allan Memorial Institute, conducted experiments using electroshock and drug-induced sleep. The research was funded from 1950 to 1965 by the CIA and by the Canadian government.

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So There ... Until We Comment Again

This little blurb appeared in Clinical Neurology News:

Neurologist's Nobel Intact

The Nobel Foundation is rejecting efforts by a group of physicians and family members of lobotomy patients to revoke the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to late neurologist Egas Moniz, the developer of the procedure. “The Nobel Committee has never taken responsibility for the fact that they awarded a prize for an operation that was a total failure and without any scientific merit,” said a statement on the Web site http://www.psychosurgery.org/, which is involved in the campaign to revoke the prize. “In the United States alone, lobotomy, leucotomy, and related operations resulted in at least 50,000 surgical casualties. Through the [Nobel] Committee's actions, they endorsed this brutal operation and provided justification for thousands of more operations.” The psychosurgery organization was founded by Christine Johnson, a medical librarian whose grandmother was lobotomized in 1954 and was in and out of institutions for the rest of her life. But Michael Sohlman, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, is having none of it. “There's no possibility to revoke it. It's a nonstarter,” he said in an interview. Asked to elaborate further in an e-mail, he wrote, “We divide mankind into two groups—one which has been awarded the Nobel Prize, and the other which has not. We only inform about the former group.” He added that “no further statements on this subject have been or, for that matter, will be made by the Nobel Foundation.”

Reuters Portugal Part II

Here is a longer version of the Reuters Portugal article that ran in today's San Diego Union-Tribune:

Patients' kin want lobotomy Nobel withdrawn

AVANCA, Portugal – An unsettling rumor is doing the rounds in the dusty Portuguese town of Avanca.

Egas Moniz, the inventor of the lobotomy and Avanca's most famous son, could be stripped of his Nobel prize because of a battle being waged overseas, residents hear.

"A bunch of American scientists, I'm not sure if they're American or British, they're going to take away his Nobel prize," grumbled 71-year-old Armando Hilario, speaking with two other friends, across the street from Moniz's cemetery plot.

"You know. That prize he won for the brain illness."

Fifty years after Moniz's death in 1955, relatives of lobotomy patients in the United States have launched a campaign which they say is meant to shame the Nobel Foundation into breaking precedent by withdrawing the scientist's 1949 award.

They argue that the Nobel prize legitimized the procedure, which sought to calm mentally ill patients by severing nerve fibers between the frontal lobes and the main part of the brain. Moniz called the process a prefrontal leucotomy.

It was later modified and popularized in the United States with the so-called "ice-pick" procedure: using a hammer to tap a metal pick up through the eye socket and into the brain.

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Bioethics Blog

I found this very interesting blog for the American Journal of Bioethics.

An entry that caught my eye was this one that mentions a survey that found most American medical students think it's okay to take gifts from drug companies and many of them do so. We're talking about people who have not even become physicians yet who are already being influenced by the giant conglomerate. Unbelievable!

Another entry talked about the use of euthanasia in New Orleans during the flood (though some question the veracity of the story). Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana and is the focus of heated debate in the United States. Considering that two nursing home operators were charged with murder for not evacuating their residents in time, I don't see how those euthanasia physicians can go without being charged with murder as well. The nursing home people didn't even intentionally kill their patients while these physicians allegedly did. This could turn into something very big if it turns out to be true.

Reuters Portugal Story

Here's a story out of Reuters in Portugal:
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Bid to strip lobotomy pioneer of Nobel
REUTERS in Avanca
An unsettling rumour is doing the rounds in the dusty town of Avanca.

Egas Moniz, inventor of the lobotomy and Avanca's most famous son, could be stripped of his Nobel prize because of a battle being waged overseas, residents hear.

"A bunch of American scientists, they're going to take away his Nobel prize," grumbled 71-year-old Armando Hilario, speaking with two friends, across the street from Moniz's cemetery plot.

Fifty years after Moniz's death in 1955, relatives of lobotomy patients in the United States have launched a campaign which they say is meant to shame the Nobel Foundation into breaking precedent by withdrawing the scientist's 1949 award.

They argue that the Nobel prize legitimised the procedure, which sought to calm mentally ill patients by severing nerve fibres between the frontal lobes and the main part of the brain. Moniz called the process a prefrontal leucotomy.

He performed his first prefrontal leucotomies on people in the mid-1930s in Lisbon. At the time, this was considered a major medical breakthrough.

It was modified and popularised in the US with the so-called "ice-pick" procedure: using a hammer to tap a metal pick up through the eye socket and into the brain.

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Kerouac and my Grandmother

What did Jack Kerouac and my grandmother have in common? They were both diagnosed with dementia praecox (an early name for schizophrenia).

According to The Smoking Gun:

'Kerouac ... complained that the harsh appraisal, which was later softened, came after he complained of headaches and asked for aspirin. Instead, "they diagnosed me Dementia Praecox," he said.'

My grandmother also wanted to be a writer. What might she have given the world if her brain had been spared by the lobotomists?

Want a good laugh? Read Kerouac's medical history.

Emotionally Disturbed

"Emotionally Disturbed" is the catchall for people whose behavior upsets us, but who we cannot fit into any traditional psychiatric pigeonholes.

There are few crimes as upsetting as those committed against children. Last night in New York City a man was arrested for stabbing a 10-month-old baby in her stroller. The poor baby is in critical condition and her mother is beside herself. According to the New York Times, "The police official who described Mr. Derr [the accused attacker] as emotionally disturbed did not elaborate on his condition."

When did the police get into the diagnosis business? Maybe the guy is simply a bad, horrible person who wanted to stab a baby because it gave him perverse pleasure to do so. If there are people out there who are considered sane but are sexually attracted to babies, then it's not such a far stretch that there are people who are considered sane but like to hurt or kill babies.

Some people are just plain bad. They choose to do heinous things.

It's hard for us to comprehend that someone would enjoy hurting a sweet little baby. In this case there was no sensible provocation. I mention that because years ago when I lived in Ithaca, New York there was a case of a mother who shook her baby to death. No one thought she insane because the baby was crying non-stop with an illness and the mother lost her temper. She was sentenced to a long prison term.

But in this case the accused didn't even know the family or the baby (as far as I can tell). We look for excuses in these situations because it frightens us to know that there are monsters in our midst - people who hurt or kill with no provocation at all, from whom we cannot protect ourselves. We hope that there is a sign that will make the monsters obvious - maybe the mutterers, or the suicidal, or the aggressive people are the monsters. But remember Dennis Rader and Ted Bundy - some people just like to harm and there's no "emotional disturbance" about it.

Hurricane and lobotomy humor

Yeah, I know that Hurricane Katrina and lobotomy are not humorous subjects, but I couldn't help but chuckle when this reporter confused "phlebotomy" with "lobotomy". I contacted him just to be certain that it was a mistake, and of course it was.
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State's hospitality helps ease discomfort of leaving home

It came down to her job or her kids, Sakura Johnson said.

The job lost.

"I couldn't risk it. I wanted my kids to be safe," said Johnson of Slidell, La., who fled Hurricane Katrina with her family at noon Sunday and was camped out in Jackson's Mississippi Coliseum by 8 or 9 that night.

"For the record, I may be out of a job. I draw blood," she said Monday, as children merrily ran about the coliseum, pushing toy cars across the floor and people's feet.

"I was supposed to be on the job today. I work in the lab at West Jefferson Medical Center — in the lobotomy department. I may be an ex-lobotomist now."

Figuring the Marrero, La., hospital wasn't likely to offer emergency brain-lobe surgery today — "that would be crazy," she said — Johnson decided to flee her home in Slidell, about 32 miles northeast of New Orleans.

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Regina's Record

I just discovered a wonderful book by James van Amber called "Regina's Record". It's about his mother who was ... I hardly know what to say ... who was brutalized by the Veteran's Administration psychiatric system. Even the word "brutalized" seems mild compared to what she went through ... endless shock treatments, cold hydrotherapy sessions, abuse by other patients (and no doubt by staff as well), hours upon hours spent in restraints, and an illegal lobotomy (he can prove it was illegal). All this the VA concluded was "superior treatment, even by today's standards". Dear God ... what does that say about today's standards?

James's description of "hydrotherapy" is stunning. This 'treatment' is usually considered innocuous when compared to other 'therapies' that patients have endured - it is not. The horror, the hours she spent packed in cold sheets able only to move her head, the impotent screams of hopelessness that her jailers dutifully noted - it's unbelievable.

"Regina's Record" is well written and heartbreaking. I can't recommend it enough. This is a "must read" book on this topic.

You can order it here in the US. You can order it here in the UK.

This book is well worth your while.

NurseZone Article

Since one of our members is a nurse NurseZone decided to do a story on our efforts:

Nurse Campaigns to Raise Awareness of Lobotomy

Long after lobotomy fell out of favor in treating mental illness, epilepsy and headaches, adult children of patients subjected to the brutal, debilitating procedure have begun championing their loved ones’ memories and trying to convince the Nobel Foundation to revoke the Nobel Prize given to its inventor, Egas Moniz.

“It’s not going to happen, but [the campaign] is getting people to talk about what has happened,” said Carol Noell Duncanson, RN, of Marietta, Georgia. “Families are struggling every single day with results.”

Moniz developed leukotomy, later called lobotomy, in 1936, to treat mental illness. He received the Nobel Prize in 1949.

Physicians performing the procedure would drill holes in the patient’s head and through the incision destroy prefrontal brain tissue. Lobotomy affected patients’ personalities, and they frequently became dependent on others for their care. Still physicians persisted in performing the surgeries.

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