Widespread Opposition of FDA Expansion on Electroshocking Children

Attorney Jonathan Emord and his co-counsel Kendrick Moxon have filed a Supplement to their Citizen Petition of August 2016, protesting the FDA’s Proposed Order to reclassify and make more readily available the Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) Device used to give “shock-treatment.” The reclassification would make it easier for doctors to give the treatment. Shock treatment is well-known as the punishment given actor Jack Nicholson in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. More recently it was portrayed in the TV series Homeland when given to the star, destroying her memory and intelligence. Memory loss and brain damage are the central issue in the attorneys’ filing. An NAACP Resolution calls for a banning of electroshock treatment on children, youths and young adults up to the age of 21. The Resolution points to four U.S. states—California, Colorado, Texas and Tennessee—having banned the pediatric use of electroshock and a United Nations report on Torture that recommends “an absolute ban on all forced” electroshock. African Americans are more at risk of this potentially brain-damaging procedure as: “psychiatrists now diagnose African American men in mental hospitals as having a serious mental disorder at a rate of up to 1,500 percent higher than white men,” according to the Resolution.