LOS ANGELES, May 18 (UPI) -- An emerging U.S. coalition of writers, psychiatrists and victims of surgical lobotomies is calling for an investigation of the now-discredited procedure.
About 50,000 U.S. residents had the surgery between 1936 and 1960. An estimated several hundred, perhaps several thousand, are still alive, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
A handful have begun to speak out, as have relatives and professionals.
"It's like we were all supposed to slink into the shadows, as if it never happened, as if doctors never cut into the brains of people we loved," said Christine Johnson of Levittown, N.Y., who is writing a book about her grandmother, who was lobotomized in 1954. Poet Penelope Scambly Schott is writing a book, due out this year, on a relative's experience.
Some psychiatrists say it is important for the profession to confront this chapter of medical history.
"We as a profession had one generation of humility after the era of lobotomy, but it's gone," said Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA. "We're now back to a point where the elite of our society believe that the most sophisticated way to treat mental illness is with drugs, magnetic fields, a knife or radiation beam."
