Legitimating Damage and Control

Bonnie Burstow

This article probes the ethicality of standard electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) research, examining the politics of the questions asked, the criteria used, and the treatment of participants. In the process it walks the reader through a concrete case. Particularly focal is research connected with effectiveness and/or damage. A pivotal conclusion reached is that all research which in any way promotes an electroshock agenda (the vast majority of ECT research conducted) is unethical, for it is in the service of violence and control. This includes research whose stated goal is improving ECT. The author demonstrates, correspondingly, that the bulk of the research is an institutional product in which the criteria used originate solely with the professionals, seriously clash with the knowledge of participants, and indeed, it is part and parcel of a discourse about efficacy and safety which is at odds with both lived experience and science. Examined in particular detail is recruitment material such as advertisements and information sheets which functions to systematically mislead, prey upon, and otherwise harm prospective participants. While affirming the ethicality of much of the critical research, the article ends by introducing the possibility of knowledge insurrection. 

electroshock; ethics; effectiveness; brain damage; research trial