FDA Status of Banning Electric Shock Punishments – February 2020

It is now nearly a full year since the FDA promised it was going to end the practice of giving punishing electrical shocks to “train” autistic patients to behave. They had set a hard deadline of the end of 2019. It is now February 2020 and the practice is still ongoing.

Autistic men and women are strapped with an electrical device on their chest. If they misbehave in any way, a watching doctor presses a button and ZAP. That victim is electrocuted with up to two full seconds of extremely painful electricity.

If this actually “worked” the victims would be less and less likely to misbehave over time. But instead the victims are routinely zapped multiple times every single day. It is just a cattle-prod means of control for the doctors.

There is one and only one location IN THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES doing this. Every single other facility in the entire US has found alternative, better ways of working with autistic patients.

The one location is the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts. The state of Massachusetts has been trying to end this practice for DECADES. But we need to end this on a country-wide level. The entire US needs to be an electrocution-of-patients-free-zone.

Please, please, write your US Senator. Write your US Representative. Write the FDA. Add your voice to the lobby that we need to see action on this issue. The device we’re banning is called a GED backpack. Use these links to find who to write:

https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

https://www.senate.gov/senators/index.htm

Here is the information on the GED Backpack, to forward to your senators and representatives.

Patent US5304211A for Electroshock Backpack to Punish Autistic Patients

These innocent patients cannot speak for themselves. Please help us speak out for them.

The image of a candle in hands is sourced from Pixabay / user Myriams-Fotos