New Push to Destroy Brains of People Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

by Heidi Stevenson

29 November 2009

In a new push forward to the dark ages, modern medicine is again claiming to fix mental problems with surgery. There's little difference between newer surgeries and lobotomies. Both destroy brain tissue. It is, in fact, the goal. Who but a doctor would consider destruction of part of the brain as therapy?

In the 1950's, lobotomies fell out of favor as the public discovered the truth about them—that they destroy part of the brain, leaving the victims as little more than shells, unable to experience life's pleasures and unable to complain because they'd lost even the self-awareness to be aware of their loss.

Psychosurgery: What It Is

But doctors never seem to give up their desire to do brain surgery. While they've given up using ice picks to destroy brain tissue, they've found new methods to accomplish the same thing. Sometimes it's burned out. Sometimes high-dose radiation is used. Whatever the method, part of the brain is permanently destroyed.

Two varieties of psychosurgery are now done, cingulotomy and capsuolotomy. They both involve destroying bits of the limbic system, the part of the brain that is handles emotions. It's also involved with memory, sense of smell, and the endocrine (glandular) system.

The main condition now being surgically "treated" is obsessive-compusive disorder (OCD), which is on the rise—or more accurately, more and more people are being labeled with the diagnosis. There are other diagnoses for which psychosurgeries are being done, including depression, anxiety, and obesity. That's right, if you can't lose weight, then you might be able to find a doctor who'll burn out a bit of your brain to see if that might work.

By the medical system's own reckoning, the degree of success of these treatments isn't very good. Studies show that improvement occurred in, at most, 45% of patients. As with most medical procedures that are newly pushed, the studies tend to document few adverse outcomes—a fact that's most likely associated more with the desires of the researchers than the actual effects on patients. After all, when lobotomies were all the rage, doctors who did them claimed little or no negative effect, in spite of a 25% death rate and flattening the lives of the rest.

One must wonder, too, if much of the presumed benefit is actually the placebo effect. Since it takes months, up to two years, to see any benefit—in the less than half of patients who see any benefit at all—it seems quite likely that a combination of further psychological assistance and being convinced of the surgery's effectiveness could explain all, or most of the limited benefits described in the literature.

Psychosurgery: Bad When Done in China, Good When Done in the US

According to the media, brain surgery for mental illness is good when it's done in the US, but it's bad when done in China. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the horrors of Chinese psychosurgery. It states:

The irreversible brain surgeries performed at No. 454 Hospital, which are all but blacklisted for mental illness in the developed world, are being done across China. They are a symptom of the problems plaguing the nation's health-care system, which has left hospitals with scant public funding and hungry for profit.

The article correctly points out that such surgeries are done only rarely in the US. However, that's about to change. The FDA has approved the procedure for obsessive compulsive disorder, and as we know, once the door is opened to a medical procedure, if there's a profit to be made, then it will be pushed. Medical ethicist at Emory University, Paul Root Wolpe, stated:

We have this idea—it’s almost a fetish—that progress is its own justification, that if something is promising, then how can we not rush to relieve suffering?

The Future of Psychosurgery

Who could doubt that these surgeries will become popular? They've been done already on a range of diagnoses—obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, obesity.

While not belittling the difficulty that anyone dealing with a mental illness lives with, one must question the motives behind doctors who would knowingly destroy brain tissue and call it therapy. Since it's bits of the limbic system that are destroyed, it seems hubristic to presume that nothing is lost other than disorder—especially knowing that fewer than half the people who are subjected to this modern-day lobotomy will see any benefit at all. What are they losing? Do they even realize it's gone? Lobotomized people didn't.

The destroyed tissue is in the brain's limbic system, which also manages the endocrine, also known as glandular, system. It's very finely tuned, and when any part is out of balance, it can have a cascade of effects leading to severe chronic illness. Sense of smell is managed in the limbic sysem. Will some patients lose the ability to taste their food? Will some patients lose memory?

The extent of the sick-care system's hubris knows no bounds. How long will it be before doctors are pressing people diagnosed with mental illness to have latter-day lobotomies? Will there be a battle between Big Pharma and neurosurgeons over who gets to rake in the big bucks? Will we see shopping mall clinics for psychosurgery, like we do for lasik and plastic surgeries? Just imagine the come-on:

Are you feeling down lately? You don't have to feel like that. You're entitled to live every moment in pure joy.

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