Roky Erickson

[Michael Bailey]

last one

Dr Harold Sackeim
http://www.ect.org/harold-sackeim-lying-for-fun-and-profit/

...a scientist Harold Sackeim is not. All of his money and influence
have gone, not into an objective scientific investigation of ECT, but
into preventing such an investigation.

— Since 1981, Harold has been continuously funded by NIMH to study
"Affective and Cognitive Consequences of ECT." He's received over five
million dollars for this grant alone (he has several other million
dollar grants from NIMH as well). That's five million dollars that
made sure that no one but Harold would have the official say as to
exactly what ECT's cognitive effects are. And it's virtually certain
now that no one else ever will. This grant, now entering its third
decade, no longer has to compete with other proposals for funding;
it's renewed for ten years at a time, most recently in 2000.

What does Harold have to show for his twenty years of "research"?
Well, he wrote last year that "we lack data" on the permanent adverse
effects of ECT; in particular, he claims there is no research on the
number of survivors who experience severe permanent amnesia.

...— In a public hearing before the New York State Assembly in July
2001, Harold claimed he had "never" seen a case of anterograde memory
loss after ECT. (Anterograde refers to loss of memory function;
retrograde refers to loss of memories, or amnesia.) He invited "anyone
in the country" who had experienced such loss to "come in for an
evaluation." Dozens of ECT survivors with anterograde memory loss
contacted Harold. How many have been to Harold's facility for an
evaluation? Not one. Harold backpedaled on his invitation as fast as
he could the instant it became clear that survivors would, indeed,
take him up on it. Those who've phoned, emailed or faxed Harold report
that he either never responded, or simply told them—-without meeting
them or doing any testing or evaluation—-that something other than ECT
was to blame for their deficits. Drugs, other psychiatric
treatments—whatever he could think of—must have caused the disability
or brain damage, not ECT, he said. Therefore there was no need for an
evaluation to see if ECT had done it. In one memorable case of a woman
whose brain damage and permanent cognitive disability had already been
well documented (and attributed to ECT) by her doctors, a lesser PR
man than Harold might have been at somewhat of a loss as to what to
say to her. The woman had never had any drugs, treatment, or mental
illness after having ECT. So what caused her deficits? Harold wasn't
stumped for an answer: why, it was the short period of mental illness
she'd experienced nearly two decades earlier, for which she was given
ECT, that damaged her brain! "You're saying you believe mental illness
causes brain damage?" asked the astounded woman. "We know it does,"
came the answer, quick as a con man's switch of the cards. He
explained that he believes "depression itself, period" always causes
brain damage even when successfully treated.

— But stop the presses! It's not exactly correct to say Harold isn't
gathering data on the incidence of retrograde and anterograde memory
loss, and brain damage, due to electroshock. A member of his research
team recently admitted that he does, in fact, test his research
subjects' memory and cognitive abilities before and after ECT. And
although many of his tests are too easy or irrelevant to be useful, he
does use at least one of the tests that ECT survivors have found
relevant to our deficits. The catch: he's never published or disclosed
any of the results of these tests, or even the fact that he
administers them. Wonder why not? And since he's using federal money
to do the testing, how can he hide the results?

— Much of Harold's grant money has gone, not into actual research, but
into long "review" articles in which he selectively trashes everybody
else's research. He did this is a 1993 article in which he dismissed
the existing brain damage research, and in a 2000 article in which he
trashed the memory loss research. In both articles he simply left out
or distorted those published articles which say that ECT causes brain
damage and memory loss.

— For over a decade, Harold has expressed the opinion that research
into whether ECT causes brain damage is "not of scientific interest",
"uninteresting", and "unlikely to be funded."...

...Sackeim is in a position not just to express this opinion, but also
to enforce it, and that's exactly what he's done. By virtue of his
role as a reviewer of every proposed ECT grant that comes into NIMH
and other agencies that might fund ECT research, and by virtue of his
position on the editorial boards of virtually all journals which
publish ECT articles, Sackeim's arguably done more than any man in
America to prevent a scientific investigation of ECT's effects on the
brain from ever being funded or published.

Ironically, his lab at the New York State Psychiatric Institute is
stocked with the latest brain imaging technology, technology that's
available in only a handful of institutions in this country. Harold's
got both the tools and the money to settle the question of whether ECT
causes brain damage —- but you see, that's what a scientist would do,
and he's a PR man.

— Harold does MRIs on his ECT patients routinely, but not to assess
the effects of ECT! He uses the brain scans to help him learn how to
design and use the giant magnet (or transcranial magnetic stimulation)
machines from which is making a profit and stands to make a killing
when and if they replace ECT machines! What a waste of costly MRI
scans…paid for with our tax money. They could be used for science, to
assess the effects of ECT on the brain, if someone would just read
them for that purpose, instead of as a way to further Harold's career
as a brain damage profiteer. (If you guessed that Harold's on the
payroll of the magnet machine manufacturers such as Magstim, you're
correct! He "consults" for them, gets grants from them, and how could
he resist owning stock in them?)

— He's also a consultant to the shock machine company Mecta, and has
been since the mid 1980s. He's worked for shock machine company
Somatics as well. He's even received grant money from Mecta. Federal
law requires NIMH grantees to disclose actual or potential financial
conflicts of interest, and requires that the conflicts be managed or
eliminated. Sackeim has never disclosed his financial ties to the
shock machine companies.

He does, however, disclose that he was on the board of Cambridge
Neuroscience, a company that made a drug that was supposed to
alleviate ECT's effects on memory. (It didn't.) Harold's position that
ECT is safe and can't cause memory loss doesn't interfere with his
eagerness to make a buck off that memory loss.

His biggest whopper, for which he is justly infamous, is this one:

ECT improves memory. This statement appears in the APA consent form
and many other consent forms, such as the one recently adopted by the
state of Vermont. When Harold first came out with this line in the
early 90s, ECT survivors laughed, figuring it was some kind of sick
joke.

But no one else is laughing.

As it turns out, even Harold's own published articles don't support
that claim. He cites only to himself as "proof", since there isn't
anyone else; he usually cites, for instance, Sackeim et al,
"Subjective Memory Complaints Prior to and Following Electroconvulsive
Therapy", Biological Psychiatry 39: 346-356 and Sackeim et al,
"Effects of depression and ECT on anterograde memory." Biological
Psychiatry 21: 921-930, 1986. What this research actually shows is
that patients are poor judges of their memory functioning in the days
and weeks shortly following ECT, and although when asked by their
shock doctors they reported their memories to be good or better than
ever, in fact their performance on objective tests of memory
functioning was worse. In order words, Sackeim's own research is
consistent with the conclusion that patients are suffering from acute
organic brain syndrome due to ECT.

-- 
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"Frenesi's eyes, even on the aging ECO stock, took over the frame, a
defiance of blue unfadable."