ELECTROCONVULSIVE SHOCK THERAPY? (ECT)
THERAPY?

ECT is no more therapeutic than,
bashing skulls more,
or less forcefully (gentler?),
irrespective of gender,
with a sledge hammer,
Sledge Hammer Therapy?, SHT,
from here on pronounced, "shhh…t",
would be therapy.

Let's try to imagine the victim's experience:
Nausea, discombobulated,
LOST MEMORIES,
Painful static electricity like feelings causes enveloping darkness.

The victims are called, "patients".
Serious injury and torture are called, "therapy".
Mental dementia and brain damage are called, "side effects".
Torturers are called, "doctors".
The electrical current goes on as bodies do shivering dances to it.
And the current goes on.

Is torture ethical?
Is it a civil rights violation?
Can scientific research be used to -
justify and reclassify torture as being therapy?
Are forced ECT and SHT legal?
Are new laws necessary?
The answers depend on the time, place,
and legal system we are living under.

ECT is like the emperor who wore no clothes!
Swindlers called themselves, "scientists".
They dressed it in the big lie of it's therapeutic value.
"Only the dim witted can't see it's clothing," said the swindlers.
But, ECT is as stark naked as the emperor was!

Whatever it takes,
enforcing or changing laws;
stop the uncivilized use of forced ECT and SHT,
whether it is described as, "harsh" or "gentler".
Flush the toilet full of ECT and SHT.

By Harry Bentivegna Lichtenstein
hblicht@juno.com
(718) 231-0021
April 4, 2009 (Completely revised and added to the draft of a poem that I wrote May 28, 2001)