‘They just wanted to ruin my head’: Records show Army lobotomized 2,000 WW2 vets

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Raw Story

‘They just wanted to ruin my head’: Records show Army lobotomized 2,000 WW2 vets
By Arturo Garcia
Thursday, December 12, 2013 21:03 EST

Newly uncovered documents show the U.S. Army embraced frontal lobotomy as a way to treat at least 2,000 troops in the aftermath of World War II, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“They just wanted to ruin my head, it seemed to me,” one veteran, Roman Tritz, told the Journal. “Somebody wanted to.”

Tritz, now 90 years old, told the Journal he was forcibly lobotomized on July 1, 1953, after resisting previous attempts. Though the Department of Veterans Affairs has no record of the procedures taking place, the Journal cited government records, inter-office correspondence and letters in reporting that they took place at VA facilities around the country to treat troops who were identified as gay, along with those diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression and psychosis. The records show the bulk of the procedures were carried out between April 1947 and September 1950.

The Journal reported that VA head Frank Hines approved the use of lobotomies in July 1943, two years before he was replaced at the position by President Harry Truman. The chief proponent of the procedure — which involved driving an ice pick-like instrument through the patient’s eye socket — was neurologist Walter J. Freeman, despite objections from other VA medical professionals; one psychiatrist reportedly accused Freeman of wanting to employ lobotomies to treat “practically everything from delinquency to a pain in the neck.”

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/12/they-just-wanted-to-ruin-my-head-records-show-army-lobotomized-2000-ww2-vets/

[geomon666]

1. Sick, twisted shit

That's all I've got. I'm all outraged out for this evening.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. It's an incredible report at the WSJ

http://projects.wsj.com/lobotomyfiles/

[Judi Lynn]

7. Remarkable article. So well done. Thank you for providing it. n/t

[Demeter]

3. There are no words

And it goes on still. Mind control is the ultimate goal of far too many psychopathic personalities in power.

[frylock]

4. this shit isn't any better than the nazis and their so-called medical experiments

[ReRe]

12. Not to mention....

.... the USSR.

[Blue_Tires]

18. It's no big secret that in the closing days of WWII

there was a huge race with the USA and USSR to secure all the surviving Nazi scientists and their research...The Nazis were very meticulous record keepers of any and everything they experimented on...

Supposedly the OSS/CIA adapted wholesale the "book" of Nazi interrogation techniques....

[frylock]

20. Operation: Paperclip

[Javaman]

5. In 1936, psychiatrist Walter Freeman...

and another neurosurgeon performed the first U.S. prefrontal lobotomy on a Kansas housewife. (Freeman renamed it “lobotomy.”)

Freeman believed that an overload of emotions led to mental illness and “that cutting certain nerves in the brain could eliminate excess emotion and stabilize a personality,” according to a National Public Radio article.

He wanted to find a more efficient way to perform the procedure without drilling into a person’s head like Moniz did. So he created the 10-minute transorbital lobotomy (known as the “ice-pick” lobotomy), which was first performed at his Washington, D.C. office on January 17, 1946.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/03/21/the-surprising-history-of-the-lobotomy/

Walter Freeman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Freeman_II

After almost ten years of performing lobotomies Freeman heard of a doctor in Italy named Amarro Fiamberti who operated on the brain through his patients’ eye sockets, allowing him to access the brain without drilling through the skull.[6] After experimenting with novel ways of performing these brain surgeries, Freeman formulated a new procedure called the transorbital lobotomy.[6] This new procedure became known as the icepick lobotomy and was performed by inserting a metal pick into the corner of each eye-socket and moving it back and forth, severing the connections to the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobes of the brain.[7] He performed the transorbital lobotomy surgery for the first time in Washington D.C. on a housewife named Sallie Ellen Ionesco.[6] This transorbital lobotomy method did not require a neurosurgeon and could be performed outside of an operating room without the use of anesthesia by using electroconvulsive therapy to induce seizure.[7] The modifications to his lobotomy allowed Freeman to broaden the use of the surgery, which could be performed in state mental hospitals throughout the United States that were overpopulated and understaffed.[7] In 1950 Walter Freeman’s longtime partner James Watts left their practice and split from Freeman due to his opposition to the cruelty and overuse of the transorbital lobotomy.[6]

[closeupready]

9. There was a really creepy horror film about the procedure

or, the procedure played a part in the background to the story - what was the name, "Tape 9" or something '9'. Starring the sunglass guy from CSI: Miami.

[Ratty]

16. There was a creepy real-life documentary about the procedure

Shame I can't remember the title. I couldn't believe it. An entire chapter of our history I was completely unaware of. For a time it wasn't a rare procedure. Parents had it done to their own teenaged children who they deemed troublesome, depressed or hyperactive. They interviewed a few of them as adults. Heartbreaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy#Prevalence

[closeupready]

17. Thanks, I'll look for it on Netflix. BTW, "Session 9" is the title

of the horror film - with David Caruso. A very under-rated haunted house film.

[nomorenomore08]

27. Agreed. That was a good one.

[mopinko]

6. a measure of the desperation that mental illness can cause.

what a cruel twist for these vets. not sure they get that much better care these days, tho.

[blackspade]

8. WTF is this bullshit?

Damn. This is horrid.

[tblue]

10. "ice pick-like instrument through the patient’s eye socket "

I am speechless. Horrified.

[DeSwiss]

11. The depths of our government's depravity......

...goes much, much deeper. There will be more and more revelations coming. This is just the beginning. When the OSS (the agency that would later become the CIA) instituted Operation Paperclip, the US government simply transferred Hitler's henchmen and mad scientists from Germany to America. They only sent the known and the obvious criminals and madmen to Nuremberg. The rest we kept for ourselves so the Soviets couldn't have them.

And they didn't miss a beat.

- It. Will. All. Come. Out.

K&R

The St Louis Experiments

Unethical Human Experimentation In The United States

Nazi Style Human Experimentation By U.S. Government

Government Secret Experiments

[u4ic]

22. Project MKUltra too

[Solly Mack]

13. K&R

Sick, sick, sick.

[Delphinus]

14. Unbelievable!

To think these folks went to war for this government, gave their lives.

[Alkene]

15. Can't even finish reading the description of the procedure.

Horrific.

Good thing behavior health and treatment of vets has improved so much since then.

[bobGandolf]

19. Wow! Mind boggling sick!

[Lurks Often]

21. It was considered a viable medical procedure at the time and

it wasn't until the advent of anti-psychotic meds that the procedure disappeared.

[u4ic]

23. I often wonder

what current medical procedures will be looked upon in 50 years time as barbaric. Mastectomies come to mind.

[Lurks Often]

24. Yup, relatively speaking, it wasn't that long ago that "doctors" bled people

in an attempt to make people better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting

[u4ic]

25. leeches are making a comeback

They're helpful for certain surgical wounds IIRC.

Mercury was used for syphilis. I'm sure we can find many more examples that make us go or .

[olddad56]

26. That is one way to treat PTSD. Our government is not who we grew up believing they were.