Lobotomy lauded as a successful surgery. History repeating itself?

Now while there certainly were doctors and surgeons who worried about doing this surgery, and approached it very cautiously, nearly all of those who initially tried it reported good results, and published their findings in medical journals. Indeed, in 1943, a researcher tallied up the results of 618 lobotomies performed at 18 different sites in the United States and Canada, and concluded that 518 patients were "improved" or "recovered," and that only eight had been made worse by the surgery. The researcher concluded: "We have known for a long time that man may get on with one lung or one kidney, or part of the liver. Perhaps he may get on, and somewhat differently, with fewer frontal fiber tracts in the brain."

The surgery did what scientists said it did; the question is why did they judge this to be a good thing for those said to be mentally ill? It was that evaluation process that provided a context for Freeman and others to do the surgery.

So, could something like this happen today? Could psychiatry -- or some other branch of medicine -- adopt a form of care that we would later come to see as harmful? The history of medicine certainly warns us that doctors can be deluded about the merits of their therapies, and today that whole decision-making process is greatly influenced by pharmaceutical companies' money, which only increases the possibility of medicine going astray. The lobotomy story really should remind us of that possibility.

Robert Whitaker

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/forum/day1.html