Now They’re Stealing Our Brains
By: Joshua Koerner

The Halloween Episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent had the following plot synopsis: "It’s heads up when detectives go underground. When the bodies of several murdered homeless men are sold to medical labs, Detectives Goren and Eames descend into abandoned subway tunnels …" Even if you didn’t catch the show, you may have seen the teaser, in which Goren, in the midst of interrogating a lab technician, says, "Cat got your tongue? Because I have one right here", motioning to a tray containing the aforementioned body part. The ease with which dead bodies are dragged in, cut up and then resold to tissue banks defies credibility.

In fact, it’s ripped from the headlines, if you live in Maine and read the Portland Press Herald. Their investigation found that the brains of 99 deceased residents of Maine had been harvested at the Medical Examiners Office, for profit, and in nearly a third of the cases without any written proof of family consent.

The Stanley Medical Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland had a price list for brains: $1,500 a pop for brains diagnosed with severe depression and two grand if the donor had either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. They would throw in an extra $500 for the donor’s psychiatric records.

This lucrative cash incentive was set up by the center’s founder, E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Torrey paid the Maine state funeral inspector, and he in turn would call the Medical Examiner’s Office every day to see if they had any suitable brains.

But that wasn’t enough for Torrey: he suggested his brain snatcher "might also increase the number of cases of schizophrenia and manic depressive illness by obtaining the list of large group homes from the Department of Mental Health", and then leave a number they could call if a suitable resident croaked. Torrey also suggested paying off an employee of the ME’s office so that their official stationary could be used in making the request for the confidential psych records.

Torrey’s head shop was ethically compromised from top to bottom. The Stanley Institute is not accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks. The consent forms used in Maine did not make it clear that the Institute was seeking the entire brain and not just a sample. In those instances where consent was obtained, in virtually every case it was verbal, witnessed by the live-in girlfriend of Torrey’s hired hand, a ghoul who was shameless about calling grieving families on the day of a loved one’s passing. Contrast this with the practice of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, which encourages donations prior to death and waits to hear from family members, never vice versa. Of course, Torrey’s pay-per-brain scheme is ethically questionable for the very reason that it leads to such abuses.

And just who is Fuller Torrey? Cue the spooky music: Whoooeeeooo. In addition to founding the Stanley Medical Research Center, Torrey, a psychiatrist, is also the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center; in his role as president he advocates nationally for the use of use of coercive and involuntary mental health techniques. In a briefing paper on stigma, Torrey argues that "public’s association of mental illness with violence is a major cause of stigma." That’s a reasonable position. He goes on to state "the association of mental illness with violence is very strong and has increased in recent years." OK. Now here’s the ooga-booga-Holy-Christ-he’s-a-madman moment: Torrey’s position is that "the most likely reason for this increasing stigma is an increasing number of violent crimes committed by individuals with severe psychiatric disorders", and that the only way to reduce stigma is to reduce the number of violent crimes committed by them. Torrey says stigma will be reduced when, to quote the Daily News, we "get the violent crazies off our streets!" Never once does Torrey indict sensationalistic and distorted news coverage or exploitive Hollywood productions as the source of stigma. It’s us! We bring it on ourselves because we avoid treatment! So of course, to stop stigma you need to treat us -- by force.

He isn’t the only one who thinks so. Sally Satel, MD, sits on the National Advisory Council to the Center for Mental Health Services and is charged with transforming the national mental health care system to ensure that it actively supports and facilitates recovery. According to the minutes of the June 2004 meeting, Dr. Satel "noted that stigma regarding severe mental illness may be addressed by early coercive care that then migrates into other, less coercive systems. She asserted that some people need intrusive, highly paternalistic, life-saving care."

The final report of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health stated, as its second of six major goals, "consumers, along with service providers, will actively participate in the designing and developing the systems of care in which they are involved." Yet extreme right-wing physicians like Sally Satel are attempting to influence, and even defund, the Center for Mental Health Services; Fuller Torrey is flying around the country telling any one who will listen that "1,000 homicides per year in the United States are committed by individuals with severe mental illness"; and the Stanley Center is paying cash for stolen brains.

All together now: Whoooeeeooo!

[A tip of the hat -- atop a brain that’s not for sale at any price! -- to David Oaks at www.Mindfreedom.org, who brought these issues to my attention, as well as to David Gonzalez at www.cinemaniastigma.com]