Chapter 11

Electroshock - ECT

    Aum psychiatrists and doctors used Electroshock. Dr. Donald Ewin Cameron used Electroshock. Electroshock is needed for pain-drug-hypnosis. Without Electroshock the implanted commands which were put inside Aum members' minds would be far less severe.

    Electroshock, or Electro Convulsive Therapy, ECT, had its beginnings in early Roman times when people would place an electrical torpedo fish against their heads to rid themselves of headaches. It would probably be equally effective for a headache sufferer to strike his finger with a hammer.

    The more modern pioneer in this filed was an Italian, Ugo Cerletti, who saw that slaughterhouse operators used electric shock to send pigs into epileptic convulsions in order to make it easier to slit their throats. This is essentially what ECT does to humans: it creates a nerve-wracking convulsion of long duration. And it leaves irrevocable brain damage.

    Lucino Bini, the man who helped Cerletti develop the first shock machine, also invented something called "annihilation therapy." Cerletti reports that "Bini in 1942 suggested the repetition of ECT many times a day for certain patients, naming the method 'annihilation.' This results in severe amnesiac reactions that appear to have a good influence in obsessive states, psychogenic depressions and even in some paranoid cases .... The 'annihilation syndrome' has been compared by Cerquetelli and Caralono with psychopathology following prefrontal [lobotomy

    A keen student of Cerletti was German psychiatrist Lothar B. Kalinowsky. After witnessing the first test of electroshock, he became one of the most ardent and vigorous proponents of ECT in the world. He developed his own ECT machine and in 1938 introduced his electric shock procedure to France, Holland and England, later pioneering it in the United States. 130

    Kalinowsky was not the only German psychiatrist to emigrate and promote ECT. Austrian-born Leo T. Alexander trained in Germany and worked as a psychiatrist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute before moving to America in 1934. By 1940, ECT had arrived

    in many countries around the world and it was Alexander who became one of its key Proponents in the USA. At first it met with considerable opposition. Dr. Roy Grinker of Chicago said that electroshock and its forerunner, insulin shock (large doses of insulin administered to reduce the sugar content in the body, thereby sending the patient into a coma) caused a "definite 'organic' change in memory which does not entirely clear up ...131

    Despite the obviously devastating affects this would have upon personality and intelligence, criticism was short-lived. In 1942, Dr. Abraham Myerson said, "The reduction in intelligence in an important factor in the curative process .... The fact is that some of the very best cures that one gets are in those individuals whom one reduces almost to amentia [feeble mindedness]...132

    At least 20 percent of patients administered electroshock had compression fractures of the vertebrate. 133 That patients suffered broken bones and fractured spines and did so from the violent convulsions, also appeared to be of little concern. Rather than stopping the "therapy", psychiatrists began using muscle relaxants and anesthesia. Thus electroshock in the 1960s was redefined as "modified ECT".

    Today, psychiatrists around the world have reason to thank ECT pioneers for a financial blessing which has showered them with the good things in life, all the press of a button. Shock treatment, for the psychiatrist, is clean and quick - and lucrative.

    Since the 1970s, however, this financial empire has been under threat. In 1974, expatients, along with members of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, demanded that the California legislature of the USA pass a bill prohibiting, among other things, ECT without patient consent and the use of electroshock on children under the age of twelve. The bill was passed in 1976. By 1978, twenty-two other states in the USA adopted bills establishing, in some form, the right to refuse ECT. The precedent bill became a model for mental health reform around the world, where today, there is hardly a country that does not have regulation restricting the use of ECT. But restriction is not sufficient and there is renewed fervor among ex-patients, the elderly and physicians for electroshock to be outlawed.

    The procedure of administering ECT is quick and straight forward. The patient is not allowed to eat or drink for four or more hours prior, to prevent vomiting during the procedure. A half hour before, a drug such as Atropine or Robinol, a medication that reduces secretions in the mouth and air passages is given. This cuts down the risk of suffocation and other complications that could arise if the patient should swallow his own saliva. 134

    Dentures, jewelry, and hair ornaments are removed to avoid injury upon convulsion. The person is placed on a bed. A cart nearby contains life-saving equipment, including a "defibriller" for jump starting a heart in cardiac arrest.

    A jelly is applied to the temples to improve electrical conductivity and to prevent burns. An anesthetic is injected into the vein, rendering the patient unconscious. A muscle relaxant is then administered, causing a virtual shutdown of muscle activity. The person is then placed on an artificial respirator until he resumes breathing on his own after treatment.

    A rubber gag is placed in the mouth to stop the patient from breaking his teeth or biting his tongue. The electrodes are placed on the temples.

    A button is pushed and between 180 to 460 volts of electricity sends a current searing through the brain from temple to temple (bilateral ECT), and from front to back of one side of the head (unilateral ECT). 13s This creates a severe convulsion or seizure of long durations, called a "grand mal" convulsion which is identical to an epileptic fit. Because the muscle relaxant masks the body's normal response to the shock, the administering psychiatrist usually looks for a curling up or twitching of the toes to determine if the shock has "worked." Without this sign, multiple electric shocks can be given until the desired effect is achieved.

    The entire procedure takes between five and fifteen minutes. For this, the psychiatric industry alone in the USA alone makes $3 billion per year.136 This figure is based upon a 30 day hospital day for 110,000 people in the USA. The Japanese equivalent for ECT is calculated as 2,860 treatments (a treatment is a series of shocks) a month.137

    The purpose of shock treatment is to create brain damage. As Dr. Michael Chavin states: "There is a shock wave through the brain, causing the brain to discharge energy in a very chaotic type of state. And this increases metabolism to a very high level which deprives the brain of oxygen and can actually destroy brain cells." 13s This brain damage is what brings about the memory loss and learning disability, as well as the spatial and time disorientation which always follows shock treatments.

    All physical damage done to the brain by ECT is permanent and irreversible. 139 There is evidence that the damage, once begun by ECT is progressive and feeds on itself, leading to further brain deterioration, including physical shrinkage of the brain and a shortening of the life of the victim.140

    "...Even if one or two ECT treatments risk limbic damage in the brain leading to retarded speed, coordination, handwriting, concentration, attention span, memory, response flexibility, and reeducation. On the psychological side, fear of ECT has produced stress ulcers, renal disease, confusion, amnesiac withdrawal, and resistance to re-educative or psychological therapy. The research thus indicated that ECT was a slower-acting lobotomy with the added complications of shock induced terror." Dr. Robert Morgon, 1966.141

Brain Damage from Electric Shock

    Many Aum victims were given ECT. What physically happened to their brains during and after the administration of this terrible form of treatment? The reader is advised to realize that while Aum members were indeed victims of this brain damage, the same brain damage is being inflicted upon many other people in Japan today. Usually such treatment is labeled as therapy, but often it is given as punishment.

    Why is shock treatment so devastating to those receiving it? This is a simple description of some of the basic ways in which electric shock treatment permanently and irreversibly damages the brain:142

    1. When the high-voltage electric shock hits the brain, it overwhelms the brain's normal protective mechanisms that keep nerve cells from overstimulating each other. A massive electrical storm instantly takes off through the organ. This is called a grand mal

    epileptic seizure. Sweeping back and forth randomly through the brain, it can last for several minutes.

    2. Even though the brain is only about two percent of the body's weight, it normally uses about 20 percent of the body's oxygen. Because of the massive electrical activity during the seizure, there is a huge increase in the brain's demand for oxygen. Blood flow to the brain increases by as much as 400 percent, as does the brain's need for oxygen. This increase in oxygen demand lasts not only for the duration of the seizure, but remains elevated for some time following it.

    To meet the oxygen demand, the blood pressure can increase by as much as 200 percent. This is extremely high blood pressure overwhelms the brain's blood pressure regulation mechanisms and frequently ruptures small and large blood vessels. This is called hemorrhaging. Human autopsy studies have confirmed that many of the deaths that have occurred both during and after ECT are due to this phenomenon.143

    3. Electric shock causes damage to the blood-brain barrier, compromising the brain's ability to isolate itself from harmful toxins and foreign substances. (The "blood-brain barrier" is a set of defenses that the brain uses to keep itself healthy and to protect itself from damage: the blood vessels in the brain bring needed substances to the organ; they also carry away those undesirable substances that would otherwise harm the brain - such as an over-concentration of proteins, toxic substances (like drugs), and other foreign matter. These blood vessels prevent and excess of undesirable substances from leaking out of the vessels and contacting the brain tissue.)

    4. The combination of raised brain blood pressure, hemorrhaging and ruptures in the blood brain barrier can force undesired substances and fluids to "leak" out from the blood vessels and into the brain tissue, causing swelling to occur.

    This cycle, once started, becomes a vicious circle: as the pressure within the skull rises due to the swelling, brain capillaries (tiny blood vessels) close off. This denies oxygen which then damages the linings. This leads to more swelling and more damage. Nerve cells and other tissues become starved for oxygen and can die. Later, after the swelling has subsided, the brain will be seen to have shrunk; fluids will have been absorbed. An analogy might be like squeezing dirty water out of a sponge.

    [Note that providing oxygen to the patient during ECT may not prevent permanent brain damage since supplying oxygen only prolongs the seizure, much like throwing fuel on a fire. The neurons (nerve cells) die when the available substances they use as fuel are exhausted. The subsequent coma that follows a seizure can occur from a lack of necessary nutrients - even though an adequate amount of oxygen was present. Any apparent benefits of supplying oxygen to the patient are thus negated by the subsequent brain damage that occurs.]

    5. The increase in blood pressure causes the swelling to spread to wider areas of the brain. Leakage of undesirable substances across the blood-brain barrier occurs.

    6. The cycle of blood pressure-induced damage is not prevented by "modern" use of muscle relaxants and anesthetics simply because it is the brain's enormous demand for oxygen during the seizure that causes the high blood pressure. During the seizure, the demand exists whether the patient is anesthetized or not.

    7. Each successive "treatment" creates new injuries and escalates damage in the areas already affected. A usual course of ECT involves six to twelve shocks over a period of weeks.

    8. The chemical composition of the brain is changed by the electric shock. Cellular activity is altered for hours after the "treatment". Abnormal levels of neurotransmitters (chemical substances that assist in the transmission of electrical impulses between nerve cells) and enzymes (protein substances) appear. The switchboard-like function of the brain becomes scrambled and impaired. Memory loss, confusion, and loss of space and time orientation result.

    9. Following ECT there is a marked rise of a substance called arachidonic acid (an unsaturated fatty acid obtained from lecithin) that can cause small strokes to occur throughout the brain. The damage is random, accumulates over many treatments, is not limited to the area directly assaulted with the electric shock, and can lead to death.

    10. The physiology of the brain is changed from normal to abnormal ECT. There are profound alterations in brain function which are measured as EEG changes (EEG: Electroencephalogram: a recording of the brain's electrical activity). These represent extremely long-lasting, probably permanent, abnormalities of brain function. It is said to

    be "similar to... epilepsy... and other neuropathologies."144 According to one study, "...the biochemical basis for convulsive therapy is similar to that of cranial cerebral trauma."

    As early as 1942, studies showed that ECT to cause brain damage. Dr. Bernard J. Alpers, who carried out the first post-ECT autopsies, found in two cases hemorrhages and tissue destruction which "offers a clear demonstration of the fact that [ECT] is followed at times by structural damage of the brain."145

    "The muscle paralyser can cause prolonged failure to breathe and cardiac shock. The paralysis may also intense the horror of the patient's experience. While barbiturates make for a smoother trip into unconsciousness, they also increase the chances of death by choking. "John Friedberg, M.D. Neurologist. 146

Aum: Psychiatry and its German Heritage

    While it is generally known that sarin, the killer nerve gas that was used in the Tokyo subways, first originated from the laboratories of Nazi Germany, it is not known that the electric shock techniques of the Aum doctors, and Cameron, came from Germany also.

    In World War 1 a German neurologist and medical officer named Fritz Kaufman developed a procedure that was definitely similar to that of Cameron, and subsequently the doctors of Aum. Kaufman described it as follows:

    "... We are now in a position to produce in a sick person... such a shock through treatment with a strong electrical current, artificially produced... in conjunction with the help of the appropriate verbal suggestions in the form of commands. Our process is made up of four components:

    battle was treated in a helpless manner. He felt, "...this problem has now been solved by means of suggestive treatment with the aid of painful electronic currents, as well by the policy of not letting patients attain their goals which the illness served. In the last war, the patients definitely felt that they could attain things by their illness, while in this war they could not." 148

    An electric shock box was developed for use on German soldiers near the front. With this instrument, it was not uncommon for soldiers to be killed, not by war, but by their attending psychiatrists. Dr. Emil Gelny, a psychiatrist and a member of the Nazi party since 1933, founded a procedure known as "electro-execution," described as follows:

    "Once a patient went unconscious from the affects of the electricity, the caretakers then had to attach four other electrodes to the hands and feet of the patient. Dr. Gelny ran high voltage through them and after ten minutes at the most, death of the patient would set in." 149

    The similarity between the German war machine medical team of this era, and Aum medical team bear striking similarities. Both were willing to give electric shocks to their own kind to change their will, and both appear to have been able to bring themselves to kill their own kind when their own kind ceased to fulfill the ideal role of a member. And what must be noted is that in both cases the similarity is in the treatment and use of psychiatry.

    Electric shock was introduced to Japan from Germany in 1939, by Goro Yasukochi and Koji Musaka, before it reached the USA.

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