“A federal judge on Wednesday June 29 refused to order prison officials to stop forcibly medicating Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner with anti-psychotic drugs.
“U.S. District Judge Larry Burns rejected a request by defense attorneys for Loughner, 22, to halt the procedure at a federal prisoners’ hospital in Missouri.
“Last month Loughner was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges he killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, during a January 8 shooting in Tucson, Arizona.
“His defense team filed an emergency petition arguing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had decided, without the permission of the court, to “involuntarily and forcibly medicate him on the grounds that he is a danger to others.”
“In response, prosecutors said that after Loughner had declined to take medication, the Bureau of Prisons determined at an administrative hearing that he should be involuntarily medicated.”
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-shooting-loughner-medication-idUSTRE75S85P20110629]
Without becoming involved in the legal case for or against Loughner, one can still remark on the subject of involuntary commitment and enforced drugging.
Knowing what we know about psychiatric treatment and psychiatric drugs [and if you are not familiar with the truth about this, we recommend you review the material on our web site,] we cannot help but observe and decry the inhumanity of involuntary commitment and enforced drugging.
Can this really happen in America today? Can this happen in a country where even criminals are set free if they are not given their rights, where the strongest Constitution in man’s history guarantees the individual his liberties? It not only can, but it does. The fact is, every 1¼ minutes, someone in the U.S. becomes the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. And there’s nothing they can do about it.
While involuntary commitment laws enrich the psychiatric industry, they not only deprive individuals of their freedom of choice, but milk millions of health insurance dollars annually from private, state, national and military health plans. And while psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals are today being investigated nationally and in state hearings for insurance fraud, mistreatment of patients, sexual violations and other crimes, the crux of their power—involuntary commitment laws—receives no focused attention.
The undeniable fact is that basic human rights granted even to killers or terrorists are denied people labeled mentally disordered. Restraints, imprisonment and other violations of civil liberties are the least people have to fear from involuntary admission into psychiatric institutions. A far worse fate is treatment, especially enforced drugging.
The common thread of all these procedures is the incapacitation in some manner of the individual. And when one considers that most psychiatric cases address those who indulge in behavior not approved of by others, this form of control becomes a logical and even acceptable goal—to those who seek such control.
The fact that these actions are couched in such Orwellian doublespeak as “for his own good,” “to prevent him from committing harm,” etc., is unfortunate, for it obfuscates this evil intention.
The dangerous person who is violent must be dealt with independent of psychiatrists. In his book, The Therapeutic State, Dr. Thomas Szasz wrote, “To be sure some people are dangerous. We in America—especially if we live in the big cities—need hardly be reminded of this painful fact. But in American law, dangerousness is not supposed to be an abstract psychological condition attributed to a person; instead, it is supposed to be an inference drawn from the fact that a person has committed a violent act that is illegal, has been charged with it, tried for it, and found guilty of it. In which case, he should be punished, not ‘treated’—in a jail, not in a hospital.”
For more information about this sorry state of affairs, download and read the CCHR information letter, “Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms.”