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SEARING
THE BRAIN How Electroshock ‘Works’
Ugo Cerletti’s original 1938 machine used 125 volts of electricity. Later,
shock machines began to deliver up to 480 volts, four times the voltage in an
electrical wall socket in the United States. The brain seizures and convulsions
caused patients to bite their tongues, break teeth or jaws, and fractures of
the spine, pelvis or other bones were common. Today, pre-oxygenation of the
brain, muscle relaxants and anesthetics are administered to hide the barbaric
external effects of ECT, but the electric current searing invisibly through
the victims’ brains is just as harmful as ever.
Today, when administering Electroconvulsive Therapy [ECT]:
1. The patient is injected with an anesthetic to block out pain, and
a muscle-paralyzing agent to shut down muscular activity and prevent spinal
fractures. Dr. Clinton LaGrange, an anesthesiologist, describes the procedure
as it is still performed in 2004: “… when the psychiatrist is ready and the
patient has been pre-oxygenated (administered extra oxygen) for a few minutes,
then we administer … Methohexital (a barbiturate)” to put the patient to sleep.
“Then we place a tourniquet on the patient’s leg. … We want to be able to determine
if the patient is having an adequate seizure and the only way to be able to
tell that is if you have a portion of the body that is isolated from the bloodstream
so that you can see the muscles seizing.” The tourniquet, he says, “prevents
that muscle relaxant from reaching that part of the body.”
A muscle relaxant, Succinylcholine, is then administered, to cause paralysis.
When used to capture animals, Succinylcholine paralyzes them but they remain
awake, are completely aware of what is happening to them and can feel pain.
LaGrange explains further: “It paralyzes the muscles, relaxes the muscles
… so that the muscles can’t work at all.” The patient is not able to breathe
so “we have to breathe for them. … We have a mask and a bag that we ventilate
(oxygen administered artificially) them with … the patient is not completely
relaxed … there are times when the patient may move their arms, or the rest
of their muscles, their neck muscles [or] clench their jaw.”
2. Electrodes are placed on the temples bilaterally (from one side
of the brain to the other) or unilaterally (front to back on one side of the
head).
3. A rubber gag is placed in the mouth to keep teeth from breaking or
patients from biting their tongues.
4. Between 180 and 480 volts of electricity send a current searing through
the brain.
5. To meet the brain’s demand for oxygen, blood flow to the brain can
increase as much as 400%. Blood pressure can increase 200%. Under normal conditions,
the brain uses a blood-brain barrier to keep itself healthy against harmful
toxins and foreign substances. With ECT, harmful substances “leak” from blood
vessels into the brain tissue, causing swelling. Nerve cells die. Cellular activity
is altered. The physiology of the brain is altered.
6. Most patients are given a total of six to twelve shocks, once a day,
three times a week.
7. The results are memory loss, confusion, loss of space-time orientation,
and even death.
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