Tuesday, June 20, 2006

"People" magazine's aversive electroshock

I was looking through People magazine while waiting at a doctor's office this afternoon. In the magazine was an article on a boy who'd been sent by his mother (she regretted the decision later on) to a camp where aversive-therapy electroshocks were used to help break some of the son's bad habits.

Anyway, the article went on to say that the band around the boy's wrist only delivered a small, two-second electroshock, comparable (in feeling) to a bee sting. Then, in parentheses, the article lost its mind and said, "These are much less damaging than the electroshocks made famous in (the movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I felt as if I were insane! Talk about apples and oranges...other than electricity, what on earth do those two things above have to do with one another? Absolutely nothing, unless the article's writer was equating the two with discipline. And what does the author mean about "damaging"?

Someone needed to do a little more thinking before making a statement as off-the-hip as the one in the article. Aversive electroshock for him or her!

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