Lobotomy Back in Spotlight After 30 Years

[Mizmoon]

The lobotomy, once a widely used method for treating mental illness, epilepsy and even chronic headaches, is generating fresh controversy 30 years after doctors stopped performing the procedure now viewed as barbaric.

A new book and a medical historian contend the crude brain surgery actually helped roughly 10 percent of the estimated 50,000 Americans who underwent the procedure between the mid-1930s and the 1970s. But relatives of lobotomy patients want the Nobel Prize given to its inventor revoked.

...

Lobotomy was pioneered in 1936 by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, who operated on people with severe psychiatric illnesses, particularly agitation and depression. Through holes drilled in the skull, Moniz cut through nerve fibers connecting the brain's frontal lobe, which controls thinking, with other brain regions — believing that as new nerve connections formed the patient's abnormal behavior would end.

Moniz, already widely respected for inventing an early brain-imaging method, gave sketchy reports that many patients benefited and was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949.

http://tinyurl.com/cxgn9

[Roland99]

1. I know who should be used first in new experiments!!!

[Mokito]

4. No can do,

Nothing to lobotomize in there!

[HuckleB]

5. Durn it all.

Yer no fun.

[Roland99]

9. Damn....you're right

[WhiteTara]

2. are they getting ready for Stalin style

mental institutions? I can see it now.

[HuckleB]

3. ?

:shrug:

[IndianaGreen]

6. Lobotomy without surgery

just watch Faux News 24/7 for a week and your higher brain functions will be lobotomized.

[HuckleB]

10. Indeed, but just about any channel will do.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/07/09/a10a_jeffersoncol_0709.html

[Gato Moteado]

7. when did pickles get hers?

was it before or after doctors stopped performing it because it was viewed as barbaric?

[wli]

8. crimes against humanity

He should have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

[puddycat]

11. 10% helped? Doing nothing would have produced a higher precentage!

In other words, would you have an operation done when there was only a 10% chance you'd be helped? My God, psychiatric patients are the only group left on Earth that have no really strong advocates. Blame crime on them, think of new ways to torture them, etc. And since the majority of psych patients are women, it raises even more questions.

[Mizmoon]

12. kick

:kick:

[rasputin1952]

13. So we've traded surgical lobotomies for chemical lobotomies....

in order to get to get to bush's frontal lobe, one would need some serious micro-surgery.

After the recent scandals though, bush may want a lobotomy...:evilgrin: