Page 2 Colle™! J^II AU0 ^riday, March 10, 1972 Psychiatrist charges
cadet slouch by jim Earie ‘Brain mutilations’ performed
“After I read this, I realized that you had mistakenly
handed in a letter to your girl instead of your theme. Have
you considered fiction as a career?”
HOUSTON UP)—A psychiatrist
charged Thursday that American
surgeons are performing 400 to
600 brain “mutilations” a year for
the purpose of controlling aggres
sive behavior and emotions among
disturbed persons, some of them
as young as five.
Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a Wash
ington, D.C. psychiatrist, said
that a “new wave” of behavior-
control brains, such as lobotomies,
are being performed even though
they have little demonstrable val
ue.
Breggin made the statements
in an interview at a symposium
here of Neuro-surgeons, many of
whom were subjects of his attack.
He is scheduled to confront the
doctors Friday in a presentation
at a symposium.
In the interview, Breggin said
the operations, called psycho
surgery, are being performed on
“people who have relatively in
tact personalities” solely for the
purpose of making them less ag
gressive.
Many of the operations, he
said, are being performed on hy
peractive children, some of whom
are only five years old.
“The doctor puts electrodes into
the hypothalmus (a part of the
brain) and finds areas of hyper
activity,” said Breggin. “Then he
In Detroit
Mistaken identity leads to death
DETROIT ) — A Wayne
County sheriff’s deputy was killed
and three deputies were wounded
Thursday by Detroit police of
ficers in what officials described
as a tragic case of mistaken iden
tity.
The shootings came after three
cruising police officers broke in
on five off-duty deputies and a
civilian playing cards in a second-
floor apartment on Detroit’s West
Side.
The civilian, Richard Sain, 32,
who lives in another apartment
in the building, said an unidenti
fied man shouted through the
open door, “Police!” and started
firing.
“Then they began beating
everybody,” he charged. “They
didn’t stop until they found out
they were deputies by their
badges.”
There was no immediate com
ment from authorities on Sain’s
charges.
In an early morning joint news
conference, Detroit Police Com
missioner John Nichols and
Wayne County Sheriff William
Lucas had agreed that the shoot
out was a “tragic mistake.”
Preliminary questioning, they
said, indicated that each side be
lieved the other started shooting
first.
deputy Henry Duvall, 29, of De
troit, was wounded in the leg,
and deputy Aaron Vincent, 23,
had a grazing gun wound of the
head.
“The officers . . . saw what
seemed to them to be a suspi
cious-looking armed man who
entered an apartment late at
night before they could reach
him to question him,” Nichols
said.
Deputy Henry Henderson, 40,
of Detroit, was fatally wounded
in the shooting; Deputy James
Jenkins, 29, of Detroit, was criti
cally injured with bullet wounds
in the head, arm and abdomen;
None of the officers involved
was in uniform. The city police
men were members of a contro
versial unit called STRESS —
Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe
Streets.
Several alleged robbers have
been shot and killed on the streets
by STRESS officers.
Portable ‘intensive care’ unit
may be used on cardiac cases
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. ) —
An Army team revealed Thursday
a demonstration model of a tiny
device which they say can be im
planted in a cardiac patient to
guard his heart like a portable
intensive care unit.
Developed at Ft. Monmouth,
N.J., it is designed to automati
cally monitor the heart, detect
lethal rhythm irregularities and
return it to its normal heartbeat.
The device, about the size of
a woman’s powder puff, is par
ticularly aimed for use in remote
areas such as military field hos
pitals or small towns where mon
itoring equipment is unavailable.
Two Army medical officers and
a civilian research scientist said
the computerized device has been
successfully tested in dogs and
should be ready for human use
within a year.
An external device that will
perform the same functions is ex
pected to be completed by the end
of June, they said.
It was the brainchild of Maj.
Leo Rubin, chief of medicine at
Ft. Monmouth’s Patterson Army
Hospital, who said he first began
experimenting with the idea while
a resident at Montefiore Hospital
in the Bronx, New York.
“It’s almost like an implan
table, miniaturized cardiac inten
sive care unit,” he said in an in
terview here Thursday.
Rubin said he believes it ulti
mately will eliminate the con
stant monitoring of heart patients
in cardiac wards. It also will al
low for early transportation of
critically injured patients with
out the need for coronary inten
sive care nurses or cardiologists
accompanying them, he said. >
Using a demonstration model
several inches larger than the
battery-powered device, Rubin
showed how it works:
Connected to a special cath
eter threaded through the jugular
vein to the right ventricle of the
heart, it monitors the heartbeat
with miniaturized computer cir
cuits.
When the heart goes into fibr
illation — wild and discordant
tremors—the device will shock the
heart with a powerful electrical
charge that will bring the heart
to a standstill.
If the heart does not return to
normal by itself, the device will
call into action a built-in pace
maker that will restore the nor
mal heartbeat.
Large machines in hospital car
diac units now perform the same
tasks, Rubin pointed out.
AARGH!
... John R. Moffitt
»n-~ *7*
Cbe Battalion
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Managing Editor Doug Dilley
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coagulates that area. Then the
children become quiet and easy to
manage.”
The coagulation is performed
with heat and, in effect, kills that
part of the brain, he said.
“To mutilate them in order to
calm them down is a terrible
thing,” Breggin said.
Psycho-surgery enjoyed wide
use in institutions three decades
ago, he said, but declined in the
late 1950s.
“We’re just at the beginning
of a second wave,” he said. “The
first one took 50,000 victims.”
Neurotic women in their 40s
and 60s, he said, are the largest
group receiving the operations.
“A woman is more subject to
any type of pressure you can put
on,” he said. “A man will put up
with a very brain damaged house
keeper.”
Some of the operations, he said,
are being performed under a U.S.
Department of Justice grant de
signed to develop a method of
screening out people who are
prone to violence.
“A return to lobotomy is a
part of the return to law and
order,” Breggin said.
The psychiatrist said the oper
ations have proven of no real
value in most cases.
“You can’t help a man by put
ting a defect into his personality,”
he said. “It’s like treating a car
which has a knock by firing bul
lets into it. Lobotomies are par
tial abortions on living individ
uals.”
Psycho-surgery, he said^ had
largely been confined before to
patients “from the back wards”
of institutions, but now patients
receiving the procedure are often
only neurotic.
Mutscher trial
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(Continued from page 1)
bank reserves considerably be
low their average and added: “I
was never able to convince Mr.
Sharp that banks should have
reserves. He never understood.”
The defense spent three hours
cross - examining state Rep.
Charles Patterson of Taylor,
often linked with the anti-n for the
TEAM 4’ET...
I'VE DECIDED TO BE
A HOLDOUT!
WU DON'T EVEN KNOlx) U)HAT,
v A HOLDOUT If... S
U)HY DON'T V0U TELL ME,
AND THEN I'LL BE ONE!
See:
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{•1 Aid Office
M 1, 1972.
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26