Vox

Rather Have a Bottle In Front of Me....

...Than A Frontal Lobotomy.

Thirty years after doctors stopped performing lobotomies to treat mental illness, epilepsy and even chronic headaches, relatives of patients who suffered after undergoing the procedure want the Nobel Prize given to its inventor revoked.

I can see where they are coming from. Really. Though the article points out that many of the procedures were done by other doctors who "used a more primitive version than Moniz, punching an ice pick into the brain above the eye socket and blindly manipulating it to sever nerve fibers." Hardly the technique he developed.

They also say

Relatives of patients who underwent the procedure agree. They are pushing the Nobel Foundation to posthumously strip the prize given to the lobotomy's pioneer, Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz.

"How can anyone trust the Nobel Committee when they won't admit to such a terrible mistake?'' asks Christine Johnson, a Levittown, N.Y., medical librarian who started a campaign to have the prize revoked.

Trust/Nobel Prize. Hmmm. Yasser Arafat, anyone? If we are going to start taking them away - that would be a great place to start.

But it ain't gonna happen

The Nobel charter has no provision for appeal of a prize awarded, he said, and the foundation ignores such criticisms, as it did when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Peace Prize was challenged.

I don't know enough about lobotomies to know if they were the horror that this campaign, and a lot of old jokes, make them out to be. I do know that it seems as if they are wasting their time and energy on something long past and unalterable.

Posted by Vox at July 22, 2005 10:26 AM | general