By systematically targeting electroconvulsive therapy as part of its war on psychiatry, experts say Scientology could decimate a treatment that is “saving so many lives.”
…
The Atlantic’s 2001 article explained that ECT [Electroconvulsive therapy] had emerged from a terrifying past to become a safe and effective treatment for some of the worst effects of serious mental illnesses. But Scientology, through its campaigns and by pushing legislation, was promoting outdated myths about the procedure for a public that knew little about it.
Miscavige’s November 3 speech illustrated that Scientology is still pushing this agenda more than 20 years later—but with one big difference.
While Scientology has continued to campaign against ECT on various fronts, it has pursued a little known but very effective strategy against ECT’s most vulnerable spot: Namely, the two small companies that manufacture the devices that physicians use during the procedure.
For decades, Scientology has quietly waged a litigation war against those two companies, SigmaStim and Somatics, and it has both nearly on the ropes.
Scientology knows that if the two companies go out of business, federal regulations mandate that doctors will no longer be able to use their devices, and ECT will become unavailable in this country and around the world.
Those medical providers say that ECT is a safe procedure that is saving lives every day, and they are extremely concerned that it is nearly on the brink of disappearing—and only because of the relentless attacks of Scientology on the device manufacturers, a war that has flown completely under the radar until now.
The Church of Scientology has a museum in Hollywood, CA called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death. They don’t admit it’s affiliated with the church- more on that later- it claims it’s run by the “Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights,” which is one of their lobbying groups.
Right next to it is a restaurant called The Cat and Fiddle, which happened to be where an atheist social group I was a part of when I lived there met up once a month. So one day, we decide to go over. They make you give your name and address to go in, so we gave very obvious fake ones. We were followed by what were very clearly handlers pretending to be other museum-goers who just happened to be hanging out in the lobby when we came in and gave us the sort of pious smiles you often see from religious people when they’re intentionally trying to do something shitty to you.
Once you are let in, they make you watch an incredibly boring movie which lasted about half an hour. It was so boring, I remember nothing about it except “psychiatry bad.” The link I give above shows pictures of the very silly exhibits. Now on the subject of ECT, they literally blame the Holocaust on ECT. Like Germany was giving people ECT and that turned them into Nazis and that’s how the Holocaust happened.
And then you get to the end with a bunch of plaques with their “advisors” and the names are names like John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Isaac Hayes… all the celebrities who are openly Scientologists. They didn’t really hide their affiliation very well.
It was very amusing at the time, and they didn’t charge us any money so we didn’t feel like we were contributing to church bullshit, but it does feel a lot less amusing now.