First Do No Harm
The American Psychiatric Association that once advocated for electroshock therapy and lobotomies to “cure” mental health issues continues to Harm American patients today.
What happens to a civilized society when it can no longer count on its medical associations to protect it from Harm?
We can surmise that in the era of Antiquity [eighth century BCE to the decline of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE], doctors were not “pro-death.” The original Hippocratic Oath states,“with regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage…Nor shall any man's entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.”
The revised Hippocratic Oath, rewritten by Dr. Louis Lasagna in 1964 to be more secular, omits any references to abortion or euthanasia, although there is still an emphasis to do no harm: “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism…I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.”
Although some doctors today may say there has never been the idea to First Do No Harm, it is clearly not a standard upheld in modern American medicine. In the past century, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) not only recommended, but encouraged, dangerous treatments like electroshock therapy and lobotomies. Worse still, the APA did not discourage lobotomizing children! The story of 12-year-old Howard Dully is one horrible example of the APA's harming a child.
In 1935, Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz invented what he called the leucotomy and won the Nobel Peace prize in 1949 for the procedure. American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman adopted the procedure and renamed it the lobotomy. By the early 1940s, the APA praised the procedure as a miracle cure for mental health conditions. To be fair, the history of mental health treatment during the “asylum era” certainly needed improvement. Yet, in 1950, the Soviet Union banned lobotomies as part of its campaign against harmful western practices. (How’s that for irony?)
By the 1950s, when tragic stories that some lobotomies completely incapacitated patients, like Rosemary Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy, became public knowledge, lobotomies began to decline. Doctors then began prescribing medications like tranquillizers and antipsychotics which began to appear in doctor’s offices and quickly made it to the doctor’s prescription pads. When pharmaceutical companies began marketing their drugs in the 1990s, and doubling the marketing expenditures with that next decade, anti-depressant use naturally increased.
That same APA that once advocated for lobotomies now recommends pharmaceutical “therapy” for adults and children. Between 1988 and 2009, Americans increased antidepressant use by 400%! Children are being prescribed antidepressants at a rapid pace with no regard to their developing brains.
“Anti-depressants
Controlling tools of your system
Making life more tolerable
Making life more tolerable…” Unthinking Majority, Serj Tankian
Some adults will rave about their successful experience using anti-depressants and others will cry over their horror stories. So, what is the best course of therapy? In emergency situations, as with American medicine in general, anti-depressants can be helpful if used for a short-term emergency.
But, what about long term use and all those side effects? The medication generation of American children today see so many of their peers taking drugs for a number of “ailments” like ADHD, that it is normal to take a pill every day. Yet children in France have a very low diagnosis for ADHD and drugs to "cure" it. Why is that?
Studies have proven there are long term effects on the developing brains of children. Are we teaching our children to “take a pill” when they feel depressed or distracted, rather than examining the child’s diet or the child’s actions?
One of the biggest problems in treating ailments of the brain is that there are no diagnostic tests to prove it one way or another. Psychologists like Dr. Richard Bentall have been questioning the use of drugs and whether psychosis is really a brain disease.
It is hard to distinguish between Aldous Huxley's Soma and antidepressant use. Numbing the mind helps ease the worries of 21st century life, yes?
At a minimum, every user of anti-depressants should be aware of the possible side effects[1], if only psychiatrists and other doctors believed that it is their duty to First Do No Harm. And, what happens when a person stops taking the drug? There are watchdog organizations like Risk and Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)[2] that have done extensive research on the harmful effects of drugs like antidepressants.
First Do No Harm: All treating doctors Must inform their patients of the potential risk for taking ANY drug. One healthy woman describes her experience after taking an antibiotic!
Unfortunately, this happens more often than not, and there are a plethora of stories from patients who claim they had no idea the drug they took could cause the side effects they experienced. Why does this happen even One time?
As of March 2024, the APA advocates "gender affirming care" for "gender diverse" youth (aka MINOR CHILDREN) as does the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American Medical Association (AMA). In fact, they all support “gender affirming care” as medically necessary[3] and they say that they are in fact, saving lives and will point out their data to prove this. Still waiting for all that data. Clearly, the APA, AAP and AMA did not discuss this issue with any other voices of dissent, like those who have already “de-transitioned.” And anyone who disagrees is a “hater” of some type and discriminating against transgender children, “who are at risk of suicide.” Did the doctors explain that they WILL BECOME a patient for Life as a minor child, with their life ahead of them?
And there has been little discussion about the alarming number of children who claim to be transgender, and that number has more than quadrupled within a decade, the same decade that saw the rise in social media. Before the mid-aughts, traditionally, it was usually males wishing to be female, and not the other way around. It even has a name now: Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Most people want to understand what is going on before drugs and surgery change a child’s life forever.
Gender “affirming” care using puberty blockers is still a chemical alteration with harmful side effects and surgical mutilation of the body will create a patient for life. Puberty blockers have side effects that can last a lifetime. How can there be such a disconnect between wanting to naturally help a confused child versus associating anything other than “gender affirmation” as hateful and discriminatory? It is a minor child who cannot legally buy or consume alcohol. How does a minor child understand legal and ethical issues such as informed medical consent?
Nearly every day, there is a new story of a "detransitioner" and how they were abandoned by medical professionals. First Do No Harm.
Parents who insist that that their child needs psychoanalytical therapy, and not “gender affirming” care, have been accused of child abuse and are losing custody cases, perhaps to be expected in California and New York, but also in states like Texas, Montana and Indiana.
Then, states like California began passing laws to “protect” transgender youths from their parents fleeing conservative states that restricted or banned access to this child mutilation with a guarantee that the US Supreme Court will need to weigh in on this issue. Clearly, the mainstream media is behind the “re-education” efforts to associate bigotry and hate as the motives for over 19 states that have banned gender affirming care for minor children.
Many doctors are coming forward now with horror stories of gender affirming care. Increasingly young people are coming forward with their stories of terror even though the AAP, AMA and the APA refuse to see that this is clearly child abuse that is under their recommendation and guidance.
Creating patients for life does add to the profit margin for the pharmaceutical companies, doesn’t it? The cost for gender affirming surgery in 2022 ranges from $6,900.00 to $63,400.00 according to the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. And, how much will those parents and children conditioned to take drugs as adults spend on antidepressants for life? Do not ask such questions!
Currently, Michael Shellenberger is unraveling the WPATH files and exposing “dangerously pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on children, adolescents, and adults.”
When the medical community does not have the courage to protect their patients, especially children, what will be the outcome? When states do not protect their children, what will be the outcome? It will be an interesting story to follow as the various states that refuse to accept the “re-education” from the APA, AMA and AAP. Floridians have decided that protecting children is necessary.
As We the People continue down this path of taking Soma to forget our woes, and becoming more spiritually vacuous as a result, we also add to another phenomenon: “Truthophobia.”
[1] May Include Death.
[2] CCHR is an outgrowth of Scientology and is hardly objective in its opinion of psychiatric treatment. A volunteer answering phones for CCHR describes her experience that no one helped the patient that called.
[3] What does medically necessary mean - will the insured get reimbursed?
I have a book on my desk right now. It is titled The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz MD. Get it into your personal library. https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Mental-Illness-Foundations-Personal/dp/0061771228 Another good one is Medication Madness by Dr. Peter Breggin. https://www.amazon.com/Medication-Madness-Psychiatric-Violence-Suicide/dp/031256550X