Monday, November 23, 2009

Abusing science

More from the Chicago Tribune's front page today, on parents of autistic kids "abusing science" to justify experimental treatments....

The traditional medical concept of ethics putting Do No Harm! above all is quickly employed against unorthodox treatments for autism, but it never even enters the equation against harmful psychiatric treatments.

In first-world countries, schizophrenia is a lifelong "disease" to be treated with drugs having side effects only marginally better than the problem (and that evaluation is only fair in a public health context -- it's apparently worse for many individuals who have to be coerced to take their meds). But what do you know! In undeveloped nations where schizophrenia is not treated with anti-psychotic medications, this "disease" is not so chronic -- people get over it in a year or two. This according to at least two separate published World Health Organization studies!

All of the most recent psychiatric textbooks, as well as the DSM, contain direct, explicit and subtly refined admissions ... that there is absolutely no proven, bio- neuro- chemico- physiological brain-based cause of schizophrenia. Science simply does not know what causes it. There's lots of activity and hope that continuing research will provide a breakthrough any day. This same activity and hope have existed for more than fifty years.

So why is it, that when some mental "patient" is told by a "doctor" with coercive, state power over him, that he must take a drug which will turn him into a diabetic even if he personally sees no benefit from it at all, that NOBODY cries, "Above all, do no harm"... ??

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