Pharmacologically controlling the ape-shit warriors.
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Subject: Pharmacologically controlling the ape-shit warriors.
Date: Jan 14, 2008 3:34 AM
[ARTICLE BELOW]
Aw, this is simple: Give the soldiers antipsychotic medication which
results in
violence *BEFORE* sending them to war, and then when they come back
from war, give
them electroshock since that kills brain cells.
"Downers" induced violence:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=12570226&query_hl=7&itool=pubmed_docsum
"Downers" induced violence:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&details_term=1973544%5BUID%5D
"Downers" induced violence and dementia:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&details_term=10895402%5BUID%5D
"Downers" and dementia:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&details_term=correlations%5BAll%20Fields%5D%20AND%20%28%28%22psychomotor%20agitation%22%5BTIAB%5D%20NOT%20Medline%5BSB%5D%29%20OR%20%22psychomotor%20agitation%22%5BMeSH%20Terms%5D%20OR%20Akathisia%5BText%20Word%5D%29%20AND%20residual%5BAll%20Fields%5D%20AND%20%28%22psychopathology%22%5BMeSH%20Terms%5D%20OR%20psychopathology%5BText%20Word%5D%29
"We have no idea what the psychotropics drugs targets are:"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11506886&query_hl=9&itool=pubmed_docsum
"Heart damage from drugs for 'Bipolar'":
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11913671&query_hl=26&itool=pubmed_docsum
"Downers" and brain damage:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&details_term=11913670%5BUID%5D
Then the soldiers forget everything, and will be too demented to
remember what they're
angry about.
"Make them stupid, first, then make them even stupider, and then
retroactively
diagnose a 'personality disorder' (ignore the fact that they're
TRAINED
to be psychopaths), so that we don't have to pay disability
benefits. :)))
In this way, also, we create even more social disorder, which gives
the psychopathic
prisons guards and the psychopathic cops, employment. There is
nothing wrong with
this system since we, the psychiatric penis-worshippers invented it,
and the genitals
have primacy over the brain. Thanks and have a nice day."
--Yale Psychiatry Department.
:)))
====================================
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/72956/?comments=view&cID=807687&pID=807673#c807687
AlterNet
Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
Posted on January 10, 2008, Printed on January 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/
In June, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health
acknowledged "daunting
and growing" psychological problems among our troops: Nearly 40
percent of
soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members are
presenting with
serious mental health issues. They also reported "fundamental
weaknesses"
in the U.S. military's approach to psychological health. That report
was followed
in August by the Army Suicide Event Report (ASER), which reported that
2006 saw
the highest rate of military suicides in 26 years. And last month, CBS
News reported
that, based on its own extensive research, over 6,250 American
veterans took their
own lives in 2005 alone -- that works out to a little more than 17
suicides every
day.
That's all pretty bleak, but there is reason for optimism in the long-
overdue
attention being paid to the emotional and psychic cost of these new
wars. The shrill
hypocrisy of an administration that has decked itself in yellow
ribbons and mandatory
lapel pins while ignoring a human crisis of monumental proportion is
finally being
exposed.
On Dec. 12, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans
Affairs Committee,
called a hearing on "Stopping Suicides: Mental Health Challenges
Within the
Department of Veterans Affairs." At that hearing suggestions were
raised and
conversations begun that hopefully will bear fruit.
But I find myself extremely anxious in the face of some of these new
suggestions,
specifically what is being called the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007
and use of
the drug propranalol to treat the symptoms of posttraumatic stress
injuries. Though
both, at least in theory, sound entirely reasonable, even desirable,
in the wrong
hands, under the wrong leadership, they could make the sci-fi
fantasies of Blade
Runner seem prescient.
The Psychological Kevlar Act "directs the secretary of defense to
develop and
implement a plan to incorporate preventive and early-intervention
measures, practices
or procedures that reduce the likelihood that personnel in combat will
develop post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) or other stress-related psychopathologies,
including substance
use conditions. (Kevlar, a DuPont fiber, is an essential component of
U.S. military
helmets and bullet-proof vests advertised to be "five times stronger
than steel.")
The stated purpose of this legislation is to make American soldiers
less vulnerable
to the combat stressors that so often result in psychic injuries.
On the face of it, the bill sounds logical and even compassionate.
After all, our
soldiers are supplied with physical armor -- at least in theory. So
why not mental?
My guess is that the representatives who have signed on to this bill
are genuinely
concerned about the welfare of troops and their families. Patrick
Kennedy, D-R.I.,
is the bill's sponsor, and I have no reason to question his genuine
commitment
to mental health issues, both within and outside of the military.
Still, I find
myself chilled at the prospects. To explain my discomfort, I need to
go briefly
into the history of military training.
Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of
ways to override
the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their
families, schools,
communities and religions. Using the principles of operant
conditioning, the military
has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those
characteristics
that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the
inherent resistance
human beings have to killing others of their own species. "Modern
combat training
conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli," says Lt. Col.
Peter Kilner,
a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, "and this
maximizes soldiers'
lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers
are conditioned
to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions;
they are enabled
to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are
unable to justify
to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will
likely --
and understandably -- suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests
itself as post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of
men who performed
their duty in combat."
By military standards, operant conditioning has been highly effective.
It's
enabled American soldiers to kill more often and more efficiently, and
that ability
continues to exact a terrible toll on those we have designated as the
"enemy."
But the toll on the troops themselves is also tragic. Even when troops
struggle
honorably with the difference between a protected person and a
permissible target
(and I believe that the vast majority do so struggle, though the
distinction is
one I find both ethically and humanely problematic) in war "shit
happens."
When soldiers are witness to overwhelming horror, or because of a
reflexive accident,
an illegitimate order, or because multiple deployments have thoroughly
distorted
their perceptions, or simply because they are in the wrong place at
the wrong time
-- those are the moments that will continue to haunt them, the
memories they will
not be able to forgive or forget, and the stuff of posttraumatic
stress injuries.
And it's not just the inherent conscientious objector our military
finds inconvenient:
current U.S. military training also includes a component to
desensitize male soldiers
to the sounds of women being raped, so the enemy cannot use the cries
of their fellow
soldiers to leverage information. I think it not unreasonable to
connect such desensitization
techniques to the rates of domestic violence in the military, which
are, according
to the DoD, five times those in the civilian population. Is anyone
really surprised
that men who have been specifically trained to ignore the pain and
fear of women
have a difficult time coming home to their wives and families? And
clearly they
do. There were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault in the military
in 2005, a
40 percent increase over 2004. But that figure represents only
reported cases, and,
as Air Force Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain, commander of DoD's Joint Task
Force for
Sexual Assault Prevention and Response pointed out, "Studies indicate
that
only 5 percent of sexual assaults are reported."
I have thought a lot about the implications of "psychological Kevlar"
-- what kind of "preventive and early-intervention measures, practices
or procedures"
might be developed that would "reduce the likelihood that personnel in
combat
will develop post-traumatic stress disorder." How would a soldier with
a shield
against moral response "five times stronger than steel" behave?
I cannot convince myself that what is really being promoted isn't a
form of
moral lobotomy.
I cannot imagine what aspects of selfhood will have to be excised or
paralyzed so
soldiers will no longer be troubled by what they, not to mention we,
would otherwise
consider morally repugnant. A soldier who has lost an arm can be
welcomed home because
he or she still shares fundamental societal values. But the soldier
who sees her
friend emulsified by a bomb, or who is ordered to run over children in
the road
rather than slow down the convoy, or who realizes too late that the
woman was carrying
a baby, not a bomb -- if that soldier's ability to feel terror and
horror has
been amputated, if he or she can no longer be appalled or haunted,
something far
more precious has been lost. I am afraid that the training or
conditioning or drug
that will be developed to protect soldiers from such injuries will
leave an indifference
to violence that will make them unrecognizable to themselves and to
those who love
them. They will be alienated and isolated, and finally unable to come
home.
Posttraumatic stress injuries can devastate the lives of soldiers and
their families.
The suicides that are so often the result of such injuries make it
clear that they
can be every bit as lethal as bullets or bombs, and to date no cure
has been found.
Treatment and disability payments, both for injured troops and their
families, are
a huge budgetary concern that becomes ever more daunting as these wars
drag on.
The Psychological Kevlar Act perhaps holds out the promise of a
prophylactic remedy,
but it should come as no surprise that Big Pharma has been looking for
a chemical
intervention.
What they have come up with has already been dubbed "the mourning
after pill."
Propranalol, if taken immediately following a traumatic event, can
subdue a victim's
stress response and so soften his or her perception of the memory.
That does not
mean the memory has been erased, but proponents claim that the drug
can render it
emotionally toothless.
If your daughter were raped, the argument goes, wouldn't you want to
spare her
a traumatic memory that might well ruin her life? As the mother of a
23-year old
daughter, I can certainly understand the appeal of that argument. And
a drug that
could prevent the terrible effects of traumatic injuries in soldiers?
If I were
the parent of a soldier suffering from such a life-altering injury, I
can imagine
being similarly persuaded.
Not surprisingly, the Army is already on board. Propranolol is a well-
tolerated
medication that has been used for years for other purposes.
And it is inexpensive.
But is it moral to weaken memories of horrendous acts a person has
committed? Some
would say that there is no difference between offering injured
soldiers penicillin
to prevent an infection and giving a drug that prevents them from
suffering from
a posttraumatic stress injury for the rest of their lives. Others,
like Leon Kass,
former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, object to
propranolol's
use on the grounds that it medicates away one's conscience. "It's the
morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret,
remorse, pain or
guilt," he says. Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam
Veterans Against
the War, is even more blunt. "That's the devil pill," he says. "That's
the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can
make men
and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it
doesn't
work, what's scary is that a young soldier could believe it will."
It doesn't take a neuroscientist to see the problem with both of these
solutions.
Though both hold the promise of relief from the effects of an injury
that causes
unspeakable pain, they do so at what appears to be great cost.
Whatever research
projects might be funded by the Psychological Kevlar Act and whatever
use is made
of propranolol, they will almost certainly involve a diminished range
of feelings
and memory, without which soldiers and veterans will be different. But
in what ways?
I wish I could trust the leadership of our country to prioritize the
lives and well-being
of our citizens. I don't. The last six years have clearly shown the
extent to
which this administration is willing to go to use soldiers for its own
ends, discarding
them when they are damaged. Will efforts be made to fix what has been
broken? Return
what has been taken? Bring them home? Will citizens be enlightened
about what we
are condoning in our ignorance, dispassion or indifference? Or will
these two solutions
simply bring us closer to realizing the bullet-proof mind, devoid of
the inconvenient
vulnerability of decent human beings to atrocity and horror? And
finally, these
are all questions about the morality of proposals that are trying to
prevent injuries
without changing the social circumstances that bring them about, which
sidestep
the most fundamental moral dilemma: that of sending people to war in
the first place.
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life
after coming
home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,
Suicide and the
Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her blog is
Flashback.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/