Now that we’re all back to business in a new year, I’m sure everyone is anxious to know what’s up with the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, especially in regards to the Food and Drug Administration.
Well it’s funny you should ask because, never fear, I’m here with the answer.
Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions reports on the actions administrative agencies plan to issue in the near and long term. At the end of last year, the Food and Drug Administration announced that in 2019, it will finalize “a ban on electrical stimulation devices used to treat self-injurious or aggressive behavior. FDA has determined that these devices present substantial and unreasonable risks of illness or injury that cannot be corrected or eliminated by labeling or a change in labeling.”
Stimulation? A stimulation device sounds like something that might tickle you. It’s a shock device!
Stimulation? A stimulation device sounds like something that might tickle you.
The promised ban has been a long time coming. Only one place uses these devices, and it uses them to control the behavior of people with autism and other disabilities. The place is the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts. The center uses what’s called a graduated electronic decelerator, or GED device that applies a two-second shock to the surface of the skin of the person wearing the device. In a statement sent to The Progressive, the center said the shock is administered remotely by a staff member as a means of controlling the behavior only as a last resort, after all other treatment options have failed.
Banning the use of such devices for such purposes seems like a moral no-brainer, doesn’t it? The Judge Rotenberg Center has faced robust criticism from disability advocacy organizations for decades. In a 2013 report on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and punishment, United Nations special rapporteur Juan E. Méndez concluded that this method of treatment of residents—which he appropriately describes as “electric shock”—by the Judge Rotenberg Center violates the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
So in 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Association assembled a panel of outside experts to advise the agency on what to do about the shock devices used at the center. The panel recommended banning them. In 2016, the FDA published in the federal register a proposed rule doing exactly that.
And there it has remained, without further action by the federal agency to issue a final rule. And The Judge Rotenberg Center continues to use the device.
Last summer, I took part in a protest in Indiana. About 110 activists showed up unannounced and uninvited just after dawn at the home of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, in an upscale neighborhood in Indianapolis. His agency oversees the Food and Drug Administration. In pouring rain, we chanted “STOP THE SHOCK,” and demanded, over bullhorns, that the FDA issue a final ban. No one emerged from the house. Police arrived and arrested about fifty protesters. I was not among them.
The Judge Rotenberg Center continues to dig in its heels. It issued a recent statement promising litigation if the FDA follows through on the ban. The statement also cites a decision last summer in Massachusetts Probate and Family Court that found shock treatment to be scientifically legitimate, allowing it to continue.
In its statement sent to The Progressive, the center says “only” forty-seven of its 275 residents are subjected to this treatment, and that is it necessary to control dangerous behaviors “such as head banging, eye gouging, tearing their own flesh, biting off body parts, pulling out their own adult teeth, punching their fists through glass windows, jumping out of windows, and violently attacking family members, teachers, staff and others.”
Though the center has proudly defended its use of these zappers, I find no discussion of this form of treatment on its website. The center’s promotional video on the website make it seem like an oasis where the secret to their miraculous treatment success is positive reinforcement. A clip on the website of a video where a resident’s family praises the center makes a vague reference to a controversy and quickly and dismisses it.
And you sure don’t see this video of a resident screaming and falling out of his chair after being shocked for refusing to take off his coat.
That’s why I joined the protest at Azar’s house. This type of treatment is cold-hearted, behaviorist nonsense. It should have been banned decades ago. The FDA needs to move fast.