Posted by Larry Hoover on April 13, 2009, at 20:48:24
In reply to Re: ECT, posted by linkadge on April 13, 2009, at 20:09:25
> Thats what I don't understand. Why is there is so called 'medical conscensus' that ECT is safe and effective, when the data to support the notion is not really existent.
>
> LinkadgeI have no idea. There is no evidence that it is safe. Max Fink claimed in his 1956 text that the basis for improvement from ECT is cranio-cerebral trauma. In 1966, Fink reported that his own research indicates that there is a relation between clinical improvement and the production of brain damage or an altered state of brain function.
Funny how none of the proponents make similar claims today.
The American Psychiatric Association publishes literature that claims that 1 in 200 subjects experience memory loss. Fink provided them with that "statistic", and when pressed on its source, admitted that it was not based on any scientific research, but was instead "an impressionistic statistic". In other words, he made it up.
Harold Sackheim, the APA's main public proponent of ECT, is not a medical doctor. He's a psychologist, whose Ph.D. was in self-deception. In 2001, he claimed (in sworn testimony) to never once observing a case of anterograde amnesia following ECT. In fact, he wrote the statement that ECT improves memory into the standard APA consent form.
If evidence-based medicine ever catches up to ECT, it's done for. But the devices were grandfathered in by the FDA because they were in use before medical devices came under regulatory control. As modern devices are substantially unchanged from the original, they are exempt from all regulatory oversight.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:890415
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090408/msgs/890474.html