Today is World Day for Farmed Animals

You can find information about related events at Mercy for Animals’ blog. Please also watch their video, “Farm to Fridge”:



Before you determine to avoid watching it, consider these words from Dietrich von Haugwitz, a man from an aristocratic German family conscripted into the Wehrmacht at the end of World War II who came to the US after the war and became involved in the animal rights movement:

As for parallels with Germany during and after the war, von Haugwitz sees a similar mentality at work here in the United States. “I’ve always been upset about so many Germans I knew who, at the end of the war, said, in effect, ‘But we had no idea! We really didn’t know anything about Auschwitz and what happened to the Jews. There was no way of knowing. We weren’t allowed to know those things. And if one talked about it, one would have been arrested,’ etc. etc. etc.”

“Baloney!” he says. “People knew very well that the Jews were systematically removed from everywhere and shipped off like cattle, and they lent a hand everywhere to the expulsion. As for the details of the extermination, people didn’t want to know! And that is my main gripe. Rumors circulated, and some people knew some things, but most people said, in effect, ‘If you know, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know the details.’ Because it would have been too upsetting.”

He sees the same denial operating today. “I have a large animal rights video collection, but it’s hard to show people what goes on in slaughterhouses and in animal labs. They don’t want to see it. It would spoil their appetite.”

*From Charles Patterson’s Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (2002), KL 3019.

Political opportunities and Thomas Insel’s response to the Wunderink study

In the past, when responding to various public statements from psychiatry’s leading figures and their cheerleaders in the media, I’ve tended to focus on the spin – the obfuscation and misleading assertions they’ve used to negate the impact of the significant admissions they’ve found themselves compelled to make. This has especially been the case with Thomas Insel, both because he’s an absolute master of spin (really – it’s quite impressive) and because as he’s the head of a government agency his utterances have – or potentially have – important consequences.

So when I read Insel’s post about the Wunderink study, this was my immediate focus and how I planned to write about it – “more spin from Insel.” But Robert Whitaker’s response to Nancy Andreasen’s comments and Bruce Levine’s post about the Insel article have led me to change course a bit. I think they get it (mostly) right. We need to cover the spin, but approaching these statements from the perspective of political opportunities is equally important.

Previously, I quoted from Whitaker’s comment in the thread at the Mad in America post about Andreasen* in which he emphasized the significance of her reaffirmation that neuroleptic drugs lead to brain shrinkage. That comment came in response to some others suggesting that Mad in America was selectively focusing on the grudging admission and naively ignoring all of the bogus claims under which it's buried. As one commenter wrote:

I’m starting to think that MIA has a hear-what-you-want to hear mentality when interpreting these articles.

The summary on MIA:
Oh no, the drugs cause brain damage. We’ve more than verified it; should we stop using them?

What the article actually says;
Schizphrenia causes brain damage. The longer the relapse/psychosis the more the damage. It’s a problem that patients and family members interpret the article she published years ago as reasons to quit taking the drugs. The drugs emptied the aslyums and even though they have side effects, “they have fewer side effects than some of the other medications we use.”

Same old, same old.

It’s true that the article is for the most part the “same old, same old.” And Insel's piece is full of similarly infuriating distortions and misinformation. Insel describes “schizophrenia” as a mental disease/disorder, when he knows it’s an invalid construct. He refers to neuroleptic drugs as “medicines” and to their use as “treatment.” The following paragraphs give some flavor of the spin:

It appears that what we currently call “schizophrenia” may comprise disorders with quite different trajectories. For some people, remaining on medication long-term might impede a full return to wellness. For others, discontinuing medication can be disastrous.

We realize that for too many people, today’s treatments are not good enough. New, better treatments are essential if we are to improve outcomes for all – that is the promise of research. But in the meantime, we need to be thoughtful about the treatments we have. Clearly, some individuals need to be on medication continually to avoid relapse. At the same time, we need to ask whether in the long-term, some individuals with a history of psychosis may do better off medication. This is a tough call, where known risks need to be balanced against potential benefits. As the RAISE project has emphasized, shared decision-making between patients, families, and providers is essential for long-term management of psychotic disorders.

He asserts that some presumably significant number of people “[c]learly…need to be on medication continually to avoid relapse” and that for them “discontinuing medication can be disastrous” when these are not conclusions reasonably drawn from the data. He presents the very question answered in the studies he’s discussing – “whether in the long-term, some [or all – SC] individuals with a history of psychosis may do better off medication” - as one yet to be asked. He assumes there needs to be long-term “management” of these (now plural, note) alleged disorders. He talks about shared decision-making, when the reality for people on the receiving end of these diagnoses is often anything but participatory or consensual….

But, like Whitaker’s response to the Andreasen reaffirmation, Bruce Levine’s new article at MIA, “Amazing Victory for Mental Health Activists: NIMH Director Accepts Ideas Once Seen as Radical,” emphasizes what’s new and significant about Insel’s remarks. Focusing on the same paragraphs I just quoted, Levine concludes:

It is an amazing victory for mental health treatment reform activists and Robert Whitaker. On August 28, 2013, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director, Thomas Insel, announced that psychiatry’s standard treatment for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses needs to change.

After examining two long-term studies on schizophrenia and psychoses, Insel has come to what was previously considered a radical conclusion: in the long-term, some individuals with a history of psychosis do better off medication.

Insel finally recognizes what mental health treatment reform activists and investigative reporter Robert Whitaker have been talking about for years—the research shows that American psychiatry’s standard treatment protocol has hurt many people who could have been helped by a more selective and limited use of drugs, and a more diverse approach such as the one utilized in Finland, which has produced the best long-term outcomes in the developed world.**

Despite what the last paragraph suggests, Levine notes below that Insel “omits a proven alternative,” referring to the Open Dialogue approach in Finland, while choosing to focus on the RAISE project.*** But Insel's and Andreasen’s admissions about the drug research and its potential meanings, as Whitaker and Levine suggest, aren’t negligible.

These sorts of public statements are similar to others witnessed in recent days and months: Obama’s acknowledgment last year of a change of heart concerning same-sex marriage, for example, or the Pope’s recent remarks, or the IMF’s admission of its inaccurate and self-serving (pseudo)scientific assumptions and apology to the Greek people, or, indeed, the announcements we saw from Insel and from David Kupfer in May. There are a few different ways of approaching these statements, and they’re by no means mutually exclusive.

First, we can focus on what the statements say – positive and negative - about the people making them. After reading Whitaker’s clarification, some people thought Andreasen should be “applauded” for her public acknowledgment of the drugs’ effects. Others continued to deem it “too little, too late” and to point to the grudging and misleading nature of her statements. These discussions are valid and useful. I don’t think anyone should be telling people, especially those who’ve been harmed by a person’s or an organization’s past actions, that they should congratulate those making such statements; encouraging people to forget about a person’s or an organization’s other harmful actions because of them; prodding people to start regarding these individuals or organizations as allies; or suggesting that they put aside their anger in the name of “moving on.” I believe that discussion, with all of its anger and bitterness and other emotions, should happen, but we shouldn’t stop there.

Second, we can try to analyze what these pronouncements might mean beyond the words - in terms of policy shifts or institutional changes. As one of the commenters at Levine’s post says:

I am afraid that, like Warmac, I am skeptical. Thomas Insel has been Director of NIMH for 11 years, and the evidence was there for most of that time. I do agree that the reason he has “discovered” the clear findings now is thanks to the unrelenting evidence provided by activists and the reaction to Anatomy of an Epidemic. That book was so well constructed it was impossible to ignore.

However, what he has conceded is that some people do better over the long run if they do not take neuroleptics as a permanent solution. One worries that his concession will keep us off guard, and it may be years before we notice that nothing has changed in NMHI beliefs about prescribing to first episode people, nothing new has been added in terms of options available, and worst of al nothing has changed in who gets research grants and the type of research done. Research in the area of serious “mental health” issues has been blatantly slanted to the pharma agenda or decades. It is a crime how much has been spent while a huge body of solid, ground-breaking research just did not happen.

This is also a valuable approach. Trying to gauge whether a statement like Insel’s might portend a significant change of course for his and allied institutions requires knowledge of the history of the institution and of the individual.**** It requires skepticism - avoiding overly optimistic assessments and unwarranted pessimism, especially when they could lead to a diminution rather than a reinforcement of activism.

Third, we can consider these admissions or announcements of changed ideas in terms of political opportunities: what do they mean in terms of changed possibilities for the movement? Or better, since opportunities can be missed, how can we use them in pushing for further change? As the commenter I just quoted concludes about the Insel article: “So, yes this is an important breakthrough, forced on an unreceptive audience. But, this is no time to let up the pressure to ensure that the implications of the knowledge are reflected in NIMH future actions and recommendations.”

I think this idea is what’s behind Whitaker’s and Levine’s responses at MIA, and it’s a useful approach. It encompasses the first two approaches, because understanding how best to make use of political opportunities***** means understanding the character and trajectory of the people and institutions you’re dealing with. But it also changes the calculus. Taking advantage of political openings like the ones provided by these announcements means potentially pushing forward personal and institutional changes of course that wouldn’t otherwise happen or would otherwise take much longer. Thus, it counters a negative tendency of the first two approaches used alone - to fall into a fatalistic mode of seeing transformation solely or primarily as the result of elite choices and actions.

This combined approach provides chances to examine (and celebrate, and give credit for) what the movements have been doing to bring about these successes, and to think about how best to adjust the movements to the somewhat changed landscape and exploit the new openings. How are these statements and the institutional shifts they might indicate useful in legal cases, at the UN, in writing, in dealing with the media, in protest actions, in pushing for policy changes,…?

*I have to quote the last comment in that thread, just because I love it:

Yes “we” should stop using psychiatric drugs. Psychiatry is suffering from “Münchausen syndrome by proxy” when it prescribes or forces psychiatric drugs into their patients .

Definition of MSbP or MBP “a caregiver deliberately exaggerates, fabricates, and/or induces physical, psychological, behavioral, and/or mental health problems in those who are in their care.”

**It's worth noting that outcomes in the "developed world" are not generally better than in other places; in fact, they're decidedly worse.

***“The Recovery After Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) project combines low-dose medication with family psycho-education, supported education/employment, individual resilience training, and other interventions to focus on more than just the psychotic symptoms.4 Combining current treatments, as done in RAISE, looks like a promising approach.”

****This can involve understanding the internal dynamics in the organization, awareness of groups that might be pushing for change (and against it) in the organization, and so on.

*****I do recognize that I'm stretching the concept of political opportunities pretty far beyond its meaning and use in the sociological literature, but it's the same basic idea and this isn't a journal article so I really don't care. :)

Pope condemns global capitalism

As reported by Al Jazeera:

...He discarded his prepared speech after listening to Francesco Mattana, a 45-year-old married father of three who lost his job with an alternative energy company four years ago.

Mattana, his voice trembling, told the pope that unemployment "oppresses you and wears you out to the depths of your soul."

The crowd of about 20,000 people in a square near the city port chanted what Francis called a prayer for "work, work, work." They cheered each time he spoke of the rights of workers and the personal devastation caused by joblessness.

The pope, who later celebrated Mass for some 300,000 people outside the city's cathedral, told them: "We don't want this globalized economic system which does us so much harm. Men and women have to be at the center (of an economic system) as God wants, not money."

Pavlos Fissas

Pavlos Fissas was an antifascist activist and rapper in Greece. He was stabbed to death a few nights ago by a supporter of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. Here are two articles about Fissas and his murder:

• Joshua Stephens, “Anti-fascist Struggle and Race in the Face of Golden Dawn: A Greek Anarchist Responds”

• Leonidas Oikonomakis, “For Pavlos: The Antifa Rapper Killed by Golden Dawn”

The person Stephens interviews emphasizes that his murder shouldn’t be seen as special:

...[A] politician from Syriza was on TV today saying that Pavlos represents the first casualty of Golden Dawn. And he said that straight-faced, with no shame, as though the immigrants who’ve been murdered don’t count; as though Pavlos is somehow more of a person. And that sentiment is fairly widespread. I think a lot of people will be “shocked” today, as though this most recent event is some sort of a revelation.

Like a white body is somehow more jarring to the collective conscience.

Exactly. Why weren’t people equally shocked when Golden Dawn murdered a Pakistani [Shehzad Luqman] biking home from work? The only response came from anarchists and leftists. But maybe now people will finally listen. Maybe it’ll be like when Alexis Grigoropoulos was murdered in 2008. Police kill people all the time; that uprising happened because Alexis was someone people felt connected to.

And you think Pavlos’s visibility as a musician might provoke that same response?

Possibly. I don’t want to diminish anyone’s anger. I just find this “shock” a little repulsive, I think. A musician? A white male? It’s easier for people to identify with him than with nameless immigrants, but they’ve been killed by fascists, killed in detention centers, killed in police offices, and not seen such a broad response as Pavlos's murder has.

I don’t want to minimize the earlier victims of GD violence by talking about Fissas’ murder. Nor do I mean to reduce him to an abstract political symbol when I quote this portion of his friend’s tribute:

…[T]he rise of fascism in Greece is a direct result of the austerity policies that have driven the people here into extreme levels of poverty, marginalization and insecurity, providing fertile ground for the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn who promise them national glory in place for economic security.

The neoliberal austerity policies that have brought Greece to this condition are being imposed by the Troika of foreign lenders: the ECB, the IMF, and the EU, and implemented by the servile government of this country.

Both the Troika and the Greek government have chosen to turn a blind eye to the murderous actions of Golden Dawn. They know about it — it’s not that they don’t. But as long as the austerity measures are voted through Parliament and the debt is repaid, the Troika is happy. At the same time, Antonis Samaras’ ruling right-wing party views Golden Dawn supporters as “their own people”, and even the Prime Minister himself regularly adopts Golden Dawn’s hate speech, especially when it comes to matters of immigration….

It seems that his tragic death might be the beginning of the end for the Golden Dawn. I hope it is, but that doesn’t make the loss of this unique human being any less tragic.



(An English translation would be much appreciated.)

The Alaskan Collie Fluffyterrier

I was delighted to read this story last month about Costa Rica’s plan to close its zoos. Since I was lazy posting about it and then Mano Singham scooped me :), I decided to wait* for an occasion to include it with some related news.

That occasion has already arrived, with this charming story about a Costa Rican dog shelter:



***UPDATE: THE CUTE!!!***

*In the meantime, I also came across a response to one of Singham’s questions:

I do not like zoos or circuses for many reasons but one is the way that animals are kept in captivity. At least with some of the better public zoos where the animals are given lots of room and are treated well, some sort of case can be made for their existence, that they increase awareness in the public of the need to preserve wildlife and their habitats. I do not know though if a causal relationship has been established between visiting zoos and increased support for wildlife .

I mentioned Lori Marino in a recent post, and while getting a link to some more information about her work I noticed a link to her critique of a study about the educational and conservation value of zoos and aquaria. (There’s a link to the full text on the page at the red “This is to announce a new publication in Society & Animals.”)What I love about it is that she rigorously picks apart the methodology of this research exactly as she did the methods of woo/PR studies about “Dolphin-Assisted Therapy.” These critical pieces would be useful for teaching about research methods in the social sciences.

(Of course, even if zoos did serve an educational/conservation purpose, this wouldn’t necessarily be sufficient justification for treating other animals in this way. Nor would it necessarily mean that better alternatives don’t exist.)

Social justice and animal liberation: a few resources

There seems to be some confusion in the secular social-justice community concerning the relationship between feminism and animal liberation, and what feminist vegans and animal liberation advocates are really arguing, so I’d like to offer a few recommendations.

My first recommendation is simply that people acknowledge the possibility that they might be ignorant about the reality of the oppression and exploitation of other animals and about the animal liberation movement. It seems many people are, admirably, willing to admit that they have a lot to learn from the experiences and perspectives of other oppressed humans and their liberation movements. This same humility doesn’t seem to characterize the responses to attempts to inform about other animals and the animal liberation movement.

More specific recommendations (these are of course a tiny sample):

Generally, and not specific to the social justice connection, I recommend Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals



For people with a genuine interest in understanding how animal liberation fits with, and really is essential to, feminism and all social justice movements, I recommend:

• John Sanbonmatsu, ed., Critical Theory and Animal Liberation



• Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory



• David A. Nibert, Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism and Global Conflict



• and the blog Vegan Feminist Agitator

None of these sources is perfect. As with my recommendations for critical and political-humanist-liberation psychology, I’m not suggesting that people read them uncritically. Only fairly. Hell, just read them.

The NLG has an Animal Rights Activism Committee!

I was thrilled to learn recently that the National Lawyers Guild now has an Animal Rights Activism Committee, working both directly for other animals and in support of human animal rights activists:

The Animal Rights Activism Committee works to end oppression and exploitation of non-human animals. The committee engages Guild members to advocate for changes in the law to recognize the rights of non-human animals, and to provide legal support and resources to animal rights activists. It works in coalition with other groups to fight--in the courts and in the streets--to liberate non-human animals.

And they’ve been active! This is wonderful news, and another sign of the growing moral and legal recognition of the rights of other animals.

Se equivocaron estos empresarios

[Source]

I wrote last week about my firm belief that the movements for social justice in Latin America have turned the tide, and that even where the Right appears to be holding strong or advancing, their gains will be short-lived. This doesn’t mean that they’ll give up. In fact, as they come to realize their power is eroding and feel threatened, they’ll fight even harder to preserve their illegitimate privilege.

Berta Cáceres, leader of COPINH, the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), has been ordered to prison for her role in mobilizations against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project.

"Me mantengo con la frente en alto y con toda dignidad: les digo que se equivocaron estos empresarios al pensar que el pueblo Lenca frenara su lucha histórica en defensa de los bienes comunes,” Cáceres told Radio Globo.

The World Before Her

Nirmukta posted last month about a documentary to be aired on PBS, The World Before Her, so I set the recording.



I recommend it, actually.* When we talk about people being victimized by or victims of unequal and oppressive systems, some listeners appear to hear "victim" as a sort of total identity that renders someone incapable of willful action. But what we're generally talking about is how people's paths are shaped and their options constrained in ways suited to others' purposes rather than their own needs and fulfillment. Within these limiting systems, they still make choices and pursue goals. They have agency, but this makes them no less victims.

Anyway, you can watch it free online at PBS (I think only if you're in the US, though) through October 16. It appears you can also watch it on iTunes, on YouTube, and probably elsewhere as well. After you do, check out this update on what the people involved have been doing since.

*I added the "actually" in tribute to the people in the film, who seem inordinately fond of the word. :)

The highest transgression

It is absurd to speak of humane treatment of animals when it comes to their handling, management, food, and shelter if you deny them the most basic right—to live out their lives—and condone or are complicit in their slaughter. Clearly, the killing of the animal is the most severe transgression, greater than any mistreatment that allows the victim to live. And because of that, our greatest concern should not necessarily be the treatment of the animal, though this is obviously very important; rather, the greatest consideration should be that the animal be allowed to live.

Read the whole thing.

“…so we decided to go ahead and publish it.”

Mad in America recently highlighted Nancy Andreasen’s public acknowledgment that “anti-psychotic” drugs lead to the loss of brain tissue. The posts at PsychCentral and Science Daily to which MIA links are infuriatingly bad, but the story of Andreasen’s reluctant admission is important to publicize for reasons social and scientific.

I remember reading years ago in various places about this research that showed an association between schizophrenia and the loss of brain tissue. The articles painted a picture of schizophrenia as a degenerative disease that ate away at the brain, with psychotic symptoms being the first indications of trouble, but celebrated the fact that medication could address the symptoms and arrest this progression. This seemed like a clear justification for maintaining people on medications which would treat the disease and thus stop the deterioration. I would also have seen this research as evidence of the biological basis of mental illness, had I even suspected at the time that this biological basis wasn’t well established. I didn’t have those suspicions, so I was horrified to learn a few years ago – first from Anatomy of an Epidemic, I believe – that not only has no biological basis for “schizophrenia” been found, but the drugs themselves cause brain shrinkage.

This is shocking. It appears that what's happened is that the damaging effects of the drugs have been claimed for, and used as evidence of the existence of, the disease of schizophrenia, a claim which has then been used to promote the use of the very drugs that cause the damage! As the articles MIA links to show, they will continue with this spin: the demonstrated effects of the drugs are sidelined while the emphasis is on the alleged effects of the disease. But as Whitaker explains in a comment at the MIA post:

As for the evidence that there is shrinkage associated with the “disease,” meaning that people so diagnosed have smaller brain volumes, JOnathan Leo and Joann Moncrieff did a very good job of investigating this literature, and what you find is that most of the studies that claim to be of drug naive patients (and thus report smaller brain volumes), are not in fact of drug naive patients, but in patients who have been exposed to the drugs for a brief time. IN the three studies where patients trully were drug naive, they did not show significant brain shrinkage comparable to controls.

Now, it may be that trauma and other environmental factors that may lead to psychosis and the other “symptoms” that lead to a schizophrenia diagnosis are associated with brain shrinkage. I don’t know. But the real news here, for the field, is that Andreasen is, within the article, acknowledging that the drugs shrink the brain. [my emphasis]

I think Whitaker is right about the pertinent issues here. MIA chose to highlight the interview, despite Andreasen’s continuing claims about schizophrenia causing brain tissue loss and their uncritical acceptance by the writer, because the admission about the drugs is an important one:

In her last publication [here], the one referred to here, she so completely obscured the fact that she had previoiusly found declining brain volumes associated with drug usage, that many readers of that article started discounting that association, saying Andreasen had back away from it. I hear this all the time now when I speak–oh, Andreasen no longer believes that to be so. So, from that context, that is the news here, that she acknowledges (again) the drugs do cause this shrinkage.

Back in 2011 when Andreasen published about the relationship between drugs and tissue loss, Whitaker recognized the significance of these findings and published an article in Psychology Today – “Andreasen Drops a Bombshell: Antipsychotics Shrink the Brain.” In it, he wrote:

In this February report, Andreasen does not tie the drug-related brain shrinkage to an increase in negative symptoms, functional impairment, and cognitive decline. But in earlier articles, she did just that. And it is that larger context that makes this February report such a bombshell: When pieced together, this is a story of drug treatment that, over the long-term, causes long-term harm.

The other reason this is such a bombshell is that antipsychotics are widely prescribed now to children, often to control their "behavior," and to adults with bipolar diagnoses. They are being used to treat "non-psychotic" conditions. The risk-benefit analysis for those patients will be dramatically changed by the findings of this study.

One hopes that the study will be widely publicized in the media, and it will stir a vigorous discussion. Here are a few of the questions that I believe need to be asked:

• Does long-term use of antipsychotics for people diagnosed with psychotic disorders need to be rethought?

• Is there reason to prescribe these drugs to people with non-psychotic disorders?

• Should the prescribing of these drugs to children and youth, whose brains are still developing, be halted (or, in essence, banned?)

• Many adults diagnosed with psychiatric disorders are mandated by court orders to take antipsychotics. Should society have the right to require such treatment, given that the drugs shrink brain volumes and this shrinkage is associated with cognitive decline?

While Andreasen and her coauthors spun the article, they did include a recognition of at least some of the issues to which the findings would, and should, give rise. As noted in the article itself (the full text is available here):

Understanding the long-term effects of antipsychotics on the brain has wider clinical ramifications beyond treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Given the sharp rise in antipsychotic utilization,27 especially among pediatric and geriatric populations,27- 30 examining the possibility of antipsychotic-associated brain tissue loss has important implications for assessing the risk-benefit ratio in a large number of psychiatric patients.

But the bombshell failed to explode, as was probably predictable. The questions posed by Whitaker haven’t been seriously considered. The article wasn’t that widely publicized, no vigorous discussion was stirred, and the prescribing and forcible administration of these drugs doesn’t seem to have been affected. As Whitaker describes, Andreasen, for her part, has subsequently played down these findings, leading others both to do the same and to believe that she’s backed off from them.

But this interview shows that this isn’t the case - Andreasen refers to the association as a “solid finding.” The interview also reveals the depth of the desire in the psychiatric community for this not to be so. Whitaker continues in his comment, “You can see too in this article how she didn’t want to acknowledge this, or even really publish it. That is news here too.” It certainly is! From the interview:

“This was a very upsetting finding,” Andreasen said.

“We spent a couple of years analyzing the data more or less hoping we had made a mistake. But in the end, it was a solid finding that wasn’t going to go away, so we decided to go ahead and publish it.

“The impact is painful because psychiatrists, patients and family members don’t know how to interpret this finding. ‘Should we stop using antipsychotic medication? Should we be using less?’”

Their research suggested that drugs that are very widely prescribed and also forcibly or coercively administered, including to children, have serious harmful effects. This is of major, urgent importance for public health and human rights. Of course, it’s advisable to reexamine your work for errors and weaknesses before submitting your findings for publication. But the long delay of two years in this case appears to have been motivated more by a dislike of the results than by an abundance of caution. In fact, they seem more disturbed by the prospect of a decline in the use of the drugs than by the harm being caused to the millions of unsuspecting people taking them.

And apparently, even though the research was publicly funded, the decision to publish or not was at the discretion of the researchers. Despite this being a serious public health and human rights concern, they could, it seems, have chosen not only to delay publication and to downplay the results, as they did, but not to publish them at all. Andreasen’s and another author’s financial connections to a pharmaceutical company are listed in the paper. Given the history of pharmaceutical companies with regard to psychiatric drug research, I have to imagine that if the work had been privately funded it would have been buried entirely.

Andreasen’s behavior looks even more ethically problematic if we consider the context. “Antipsychotic” drugs are among the most used, including involuntarily, and the most profitable. They’re being prescribed in increasing numbers to people with a variety of psychiatric diagnoses, and their use in children has skyrocketed in the past few years. There are investigations underway across the US into the use of these drugs in children, and particularly children in the Medicaid and foster care system. As a recent WSJ article describes:

In 2008, the most recent year for which complete data are available, Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, spent $3.6 billion on antipsychotic medications, up from $1.65 billion in 1999, according to Mathematica Policy Research, a Washington firm that crunches Medicaid data for HHS. The growth came even as pharmacy benefits for millions of Medicaid recipients shifted to Medicare in 2006.

…Medicaid spends more on antipsychotics than on any other class of drugs. Abilify, made by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., appears on lists of the top 10 drugs paid for by Medicaid in various states.

…The number of people under age 20 receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008, according to an analysis by Mathematica.

…Government Medicaid data indicate that some of the prescriptions are being written for very young children. An analysis by Mathematica found that in 2008, 19,045 children age 5 and under were prescribed antipsychotics through Medicaid, 3% of recipients under 20, up from 7,759 in 1999, according to James Verdier, a senior fellow at the organization.

Data from the inspector general's five-state probe indicate that 482 children 3 and under were prescribed antipsychotics during the period in question, including 107 children 2 and under. Six were under a year old, including one listed as a month old. The records don't indicate the diagnoses involved.* [my emphasis]

The nonconsensual use of these drugs, particularly in vulnerable populations, is increasingly recognized as a human rights violation and the movement to stop it is growing.

So, the disease these drugs are supposed to treat hasn’t been shown even to exist. The scientific invalidity of “schizophrenia” has been publicly acknowledged by the top figures in psychiatry. The history of the use of the drugs shows convincingly the shift from a drug model to the disease model that has been used to market these drugs as treatments for mental disease and how it was driven by politics and profits rather than scientific evidence. There is now very good evidence that the drugs are not only ineffective in any sort of longer term, but actually lead to worse outcomes, while knowledge of the social roots of these experiences continues to advance and psychosocial interventions have proven successful. The drugs appear to cause the “increase in negative symptoms, functional impairment, and cognitive decline” Whitaker referred to in 2011 (and there’s no real reason to expect that they wouldn’t, given how they act in the brain). There’s good evidence that they lead to the loss of brain tissue, with all that this entails, as well as a host of other significant physical harms, as described in this report to the UN Human Rights Committee and in the books by Whitaker and Moncrieff.

And still they continue to promote these drugs. The pharmaceutical corporations and the psychiatric profession have not shown in this context any commitment to science-based practice, public health or well being, or human rights. It’s well past time for, at the very least, the ban Whitaker suggests on the use of these dangerous drugs in children and an end to their involuntary use in adults.

* The use of these drugs to control and “discipline” children is often not even hidden:

Dr. Fernando Siles, a pediatric psychiatrist in the Dallas area who treats many poor foster children, says he sometimes prescribes such medications to treat serious behavior problems. "A child that continues to be aggressive will be kicked out from his foster home," he says. "The antipsychotic is to stabilize the behavior of the child, to keep him from being moved and moved again."

Good art: Mishka Henner and Front404

Some art I that think deserves wider exposure (I won’t reproduce the still images here, but just follow the links).

First, Mishka Henner’s aerial photographs of feedlots:

Precious Commodities from Mishka Henner on Vimeo.

Second, Front404. They came to my attention a few months ago for their Orwell birthday celebration. Their plantmines are also wonderful.

When you trigger one of these plantmines they shoot a cloud of flower confetti at you. The flower confetti contains flower seeds, to create a permanent happy and colourful spot in the place of the plantmine explosion. The explosion of flower confetti also serves as an instant party to celebrate that you live in a country where you don’t have to worry about stepping on a real landmine.

Plantmines @ Kleurenblind Festival Utrecht 2012 from FRONT404 on Vimeo.

Animals and landmines...

HONDURAS UPDATE, 9-13

I haven’t done a Honduras update for a while, thinking it better to point people to the best sources of regular information on developments there. But reading some recent articles online inspired me to collect some of the news and compile it into a short update. Mark Weisbrot’s recent Al Jazeera op ed is heartening. Around the anniversary of the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile and put in its place the murderous regime of Augusto Pinochet, it’s important to be aware not only of the continuing efforts to obtain some modicum of justice and accountability for the victims of the coup and dictatorship but also of the positive democratic changes that have been sweeping through Latin America. Weisbrot argues that “Forty years on, much of Allende’s dream has come true”:

President Richard Nixon was clear, at least in private conversations, about why he wanted the coup that destroyed one the hemisphere’s longest-running democracies, from his point of view:

"The main concern in Chile is that [President Salvador Allende] can consolidate himself, and the picture projected to the world will be his success ... If we let the potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble."

The ironic thing, and one that the world can now celebrate 40 years on, is that Nixon later turned out to be right about his "domino theory" of Latin America. When the US tried but failed to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela in 2002, it ended up losing control over most of the region, especially South America. Allende died in the coup, but his dream lived on and much of it has been fulfilled….

The struggle continues, but the changes have been enormous. Weisbrot cites Honduras as one of the “weaker countries” where democratizing efforts have suffered setbacks, referring to the 2009 coup and the conditions since. But, as Suyapa Portillo Villeda points out, Honduras appears again to be “on the brink of change”:

…[T]his year’s election [voting will be on November 24th] has nine candidates running for president, including one woman, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Castro is the candidate of the new party LIBRE (Freedom and Refoundation) and has a great potential to win. Change comes in that the biggest contender for the president is a woman and from a new party, breaking the 100 year old bipartisan ring of rule (between the Liberal Party and Nationalist Party) that has ensnared Honduras for most of the 20th century and nearly strangled i[t]s democratic potential. The opportunity to destroy bipartisanship and to choose a new option for a new era is a change in itself. A woman president at the same time would also break with the old, as women have historically occupied low places in the Honduran political system. Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, the new party proposes a new set of social and economic policies that look to the future with a progressive and modern agenda, bringing Honduras current with the modern world. The new agenda marks the beginning of democratization and progress that has only just begun.

Honduras Culture and Politics has been following the campaigns, and, while the media – local and international – haven’t exactly been kind to Xiomara Castro, she’s leading in the polls.

All of this suggests how fragile and fleeting are the victories of the Right in Latin America, despite the brazenness and brutality with which they’re “won.” They can still destroy and intimidate and bribe and terrorize, but the political landscape has transformed and they face increasing difficulty holding on to their political gains. Force won’t work, and neither will propaganda. The movements for democracy and social justice in the region are too strong and dynamic.

Blackfish: Love, oppression, and science

I’ve made no secret of my thoughts about SeaWorld and other marine parks, and was happy a couple of months ago to learn of a new documentary, Blackfish, about the experiences of orcas and human trainers and their interactions at SeaWorld. I saw it recently, and was impressed. Via Ecorazzi, a few clips:







The movie is kind of a chronicle of a death foretold, focusing on the history of encounters between human workers and orcas at SeaWorld to help the audience better comprehend the fatal attack on trainer Dawn Brancheau by the orca Tilikum at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.

It’s the focus on this one whale and on the experiences of the human workers, many of whom worked closely with Tilikum, that gives the film much of its power. The movie shows the workers' initial enthusiasm and increasing disillusionment as they came to appreciate the whales’ reality. Their stories are relatable: countless young people who love animals and the ocean visit these theme parks and dream of becoming “trainers.” (Many imagine that the position requires a high level of education about the animals rather than, as it turns out, attractiveness, athleticism, and performance abilities.)

The former trainers interviewed are thoughtful and compassionate to a one, impossible to dismiss as disgruntled former employees. They went into the work with an image of themselves, an image encouraged by SeaWorld, as “partners” with and caretakers of the orcas. As they came to recognize the real physical and psychological condition of the orcas and their own role in perpetuating the animals’ oppression and distress, intense embarrassment and guilt set in. This is really a tale of scientific awakening, even though it doesn’t superficially look to be about science. It’s a story of their growing recognition that their understanding of reality had been limited and highly distorted by the situation.

This failure to understand was direct. As one of the former “trainers” describes, she had believed when she worked at SeaWorld that she was knowledgeable about orcas, but over time came to realize that she actually knew very little about them. The workers came to recognize the partiality and inaccuracy of the information about the whales (such as about their typical life span in the wild vs. in captivity) that they were being fed by the company and then passing on to the public.¹

But the nature of the relationship between humans – all humans - and orcas at SeaWorld interferes with understanding in much more fundamental ways. That former trainer’s comment about the false sense of knowledge reminded me of Erich Fromm’s discussion of the nature of love, which I’ve argued is inseparable from an understanding of science.

As I’ve discussed, Fromm argued that love was characterized by care (“the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love”), responsibility (“my response to the needs, expressed and unexpressed, of another human being”), respect (“the ability to see a person as he is”), and knowledge. Fromm emphasizes the incompatibility of love with relations of domination and exploitation. These relations, which encourage narcissistic distortions, aren’t conducive to respect or to the development of objective knowledge about others. He argues for the importance of combating narcissism in forming knowledge: “I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person’s reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.” (111-12)

Fromm expands on this argument in Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud



in which he makes a case for the essential “connection between ‘thought’ and ‘concern’,” the “interrelation between concern and knowledge.” He contends that, in the human sciences at least, the advance of knowledge depends on caring for, being engaged with and sympathetic to, those we’re studying. He explains:

Both psychology and sociology have as their object man. I can get to know a great deal about man by observing him like any other object. I – the observer – stand against my ‘ob-ject’ (‘ob-ject’ and ‘objection’ have the same root; in German, Gegenstand=‘counterstand’) to observe it, describe it, measure it, weigh it – yet I do not understand that which is alive if it remains an ‘object’. I understand man only in the situation of being related to him, when he ceases to be a split-off object and becomes part of me or, to be still more correct, when he becomes ‘me’, yet remains also ‘not-me’. If I remain a distant observer I see only manifest behavior, and if this is all I want to know, I can be satisfied with being an observer. But in this position the whole of the other person, his full reality, escapes me.

The sort of concern needed for science requires a recognition of shared experience:

I need to be myself in order to see the other. How could I understand his fear, his sadness, his aloneness, his hope. His love – unless I felt my own fear, sadness, aloneness, hope, or love? If I cannot mobilize my own human experience, mobilize it and engage myself with my fellow man, I might come to know a great deal about him, but I shall never know him.

The most promising approach to knowledge of human beings is the most caring - concerned, “therapeutically oriented knowledge” inspired by questions like “how can man be free, how can he be fully human [sic], how can he become what he could be?” Fromm offers the paradigmatic example of medicine: “How many medical discoveries,” he asks, “would have been made without the wish to heal?”

He insists on the importance of this active concern to fruitful discovery. “[R]andom and uninterested observation,” in contrast, “rarely leads to significant knowledge.” Countering the common argument that an active interest and concern interfere with objectivity, he contends that “[t]his interest, far from being opposed to knowledge, is its very condition, provided it is blended with reason, that is, with the capacity to see things as they are, ‘to let them be’.”²

So, in Fromm’s view, not only is objective knowledge an essential element of love, but the reverse is true. In fact, the two are inseparable. The foundation of good science is not cold detachment but an approach guided by care, concern, responsibility, and a therapeutic intent. Rather than a futile attempt to transcend or achieve distance from the objects of study, Fromm advises cultivating respect: attempting to overcome the narcissistic inclination to view others through the lens of our perceived interests in order to see them (and by extension ourselves) as they/we really are. Although Fromm is talking about relations among humans and the human sciences, his insights can be, and need to be, expanded to include our relationships with and attempts to understand other animals as well.

Considered from this perspective, the various ways in which relations and systems of oppression obstruct the advance of science become more apparent. Everything in these systems militates against the respect and active concern necessary to objectivity and the formation of real knowledge. Theme parks like SeaWorld are a good example. Billed as sites where humans can encounter and learn about orcas, in fact they’re a microcosm of the system of domination and exploitation in which they operate. This makes them useful in illustrating the sorts of epistemic distortions that all such systems necessarily produce.

Our role in orcas' exploitation, for example, encourages a sort of active indifference to rather than an active interest in their experience. It leads people to block out consideration of the orcas’ real subjective experiences and psychological states. This includes a reluctance to investigate their psychological-emotional capacities, both those we share and those we might not.³ It also encourages apathy toward their interests and needs, both species-specific and individual.

We don’t want to look behind the stage set, or learn the truth about how the whales came to be performing in the parks. In fact, we shrink from recognizing the artificiality of the orcas’ treatment in the parks and its stark contrast with their lives in the wild. This motivated inattention shades into active denial. We’re inclined to believe the stories told by the corporation about the whales’ experiences and motivations, and even to embellish them with our own details. We eagerly accept assertions of the orcas’ stimulus-response simplicity and cognitive limitations. Just as the effects of poverty on human children are often taken as evidence of their genetic limitations, the effects of the orcas’ conditions of deprivation and their responses to these conditions are viewed as evidence of their relatively simple animal brains.

The position in which these parks situate humans in relation to the orcas - as accessories to their oppression and exploitation - leads to the muting of empathy. Rather than marshalling our own emotional experience to try to appreciate theirs, we actively deny that orcas have emotional capacities that conflict with the role they’ve been forced into. We convince ourselves that they enjoy the performances and their lives at the park.⁴ At least, we’re easily led to believe, they don’t mind their situation; in some sense, maybe they’ve even chosen it. We’re motivated to regard anything short of open distress or rebellion as cheerful acquiescence and cooperation.

When we encounter evidence of physical harm, we’re inclined to look away and to accept the explanations offered – the photos and videos don’t show what they purport to show, the injuries are superficial, orcas harming other orcas are engaging in natural behaviors, and so on. When we’re confronted with evidence of distress, we tend to deprive it of meaning or reframe it in ways that make it more palatable. We display a similar willful cluelessness toward acts of rebellion or resistance, including displays of aggression toward or attacks on humans. We tend to accept the explanations offered: these incidents were due to human mistakes, the whales were playing and didn’t understand what they were doing,…

The system leads to a similar distortion of our self-image, in which our role in the orcas’ oppression and exploitation is hidden or disguised as beneficial. While adopting more or less unconsciously the corporate perspective, which sees the orcas as objects valued for their usefulness, we like to see ourselves as part of a system of protection and caretaking centered in the parks. Rather than appreciating the epistemic and psychological distortions caused by our role in the system of oppression and exploitation, we actually believe we’re being enriched and educated while contributing to the well-being of orcas.

The marine park experience is very distant from Fromm’s therapeutic approach, which would try to understand the whales in terms of their real needs and capacities and promote conditions in which these are fulfilled. In fact, the system feeds narcissism and objectification, which are contrary to scientific understanding. As the film argues, if our understanding of the orcas’ reality weren’t thwarted by our position in a system of oppression and exploitation, we would have predicted the violence we’ve seen.

The awakening of the SeaWorld workers is instructive. In a sense, they were pulled toward both extremes, the system-serving and the scientific. On the one hand, their position in the system and their need to go on with their work and feel good about what they were doing virtually required the epistemic contortions described above – willful ignorance, denial, system-serving interpretation, accepting comforting myths, and so on. Despite their years of working closely with the orcas, the oppressive system in which they worked required bad faith. By way of contrast, scientists like Ingrid Visser and Lori Marino, also interviewed for the film, work in conditions that facilitate knowledge rather than systemically distorting and obstructing understanding.

On the other hand, the trainers’ proximity to the whales combined with the genuine love for the animals enabled them to see behind the veil – to witness firsthand the real conditions of the orcas' lives and their distress. Even though most seem to have had limited knowledge at the time of the orcas’ lives in the wild and their real capacities and abilities, the beliefs they were encouraged to hold due to their role in the system became increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of the evidence. They moved in several stages away from the systemic perspective and toward Fromm’s respectful, therapeutic orientation: from seeing themselves as the whales’ “partners” in a beneficent system, to understanding their role as that of the orcas’ protectors within and in some sense from the system, to realizing that the system itself is rotten and advocating for its end. Their descriptions of moments in this transformation are poignant: one interviewee describes being ridiculed by other workers for expressing her own pain at witnessing the suffering of orcas being separated from their families, while another explains how he remained at his job for a while to protect “Tilly.” More thoughts from a former trainer interviewed for the film:



The trainers’ experiences illustrate how easy it is to distort our understanding when we’re in oppressive and unequal systems that require a distorted understanding. But they also point the way forward. Examining how these theme parks interfere with the formation of knowledge of reality – of other animals and of ourselves - provides an opportunity to look critically at how our positions within systems of oppression and exploitation, including our seemingly innocent roles as tourists and visitors, work against not just the wellbeing of those most oppressed by those systems (and of the oppressors as well) but against understanding, against knowledge, and to find ways to move in a new direction.

¹ The film shows a current employee being asked a question about how long the orcas generally live in the wild and giving the canned, incorrect corporate response. In an earlier post, I discussed Susan G. Davis’ work describing the problems with SeaWorld’s so-called educational programs, including the downplaying of evolution in order to cater to creationists.

² As the quotation that opens one of my recent posts describes, this orientation is the foundation of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, to which Fromm was (uneasily) linked, and really of all critical social science.

³ Some of the experts interviewed for the film discuss orcas’ lifelong close family relationships and speculate that these patterns might have led to emotions and emotional bonds that we don’t experience. It’s hard for humans, accustomed as we are to seeing other animals as precursors to or lesser, incomplete versions of ourselves, to even conceive of other animals having cognitive or emotional capacities that we don’t. The systems of oppression in which we typically meet make it even less likely that this recognition will emerge.

⁴ We fail even to consider that the orcas might be performing emotional labor, encouraged, as we are when faced with human emotional labor, to take expressions of emotion at face value.

Inequality today

(US and Europe edition)

It’s grown to historic proportions. Here are a few items:

Democracy Now! interviews Robert Reich about inequality in the US and his new film, Inequality for All, out September 27:



Here’s a video from last year with some good graphics illustrating specifically wealth inequality in the US (I don’t agree with their take, but it’s well made and informative):



And here’s a new report from Oxfam, “A Cautionary Tale: The true cost of austerity and inequality in Europe,” which argues that “If left unchecked, austerity policies could put between 15 and 25 million more Europeans at risk of poverty by 2025.”

One major issue I have with the report summary is with this section:

The only people benefiting from austerity are the richest 10% of Europeans who alone have seen their wealth rise. Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK – countries that are most aggressively pursuing austerity measures - will soon rank amongst the most unequal in the world if their leaders don’t change course. For example, the gap between rich and poor in the UK and Spain could become the same as in South Sudan or Paraguay,” added Alonso.

Three years on, leading proponents of austerity such as the International Monetary Fund and many respected economists are starting to recognise that these measures have not only failed to achieve their objective to shrink government debt and budget deficits, but have also increased inequality and stunted economic growth.

I realize that people working as consultants and organizations hoping to maintain decent relations and open communication with the IMF in the hopes of influencing its direction feel the need to be politic when discussing its actions. But please, stop with these absurdly naïve representations of the knowledge and motives of the people behind austerity plans. Refer to their stated objectives if you must, but don’t encourage people to believe those are genuine.

The IMF has been imposing these sorts of austerity measures for decades around the world. They know better than anyone what the outcomes are going to be in terms of equality, human well being, and politics as well as deficit reduction and economic growth. Even the most blinkered ideologue amongst them – and they seem to have a never-ending supply – can’t deny this obvious reality. It’s impossible that they’re only now “starting to recognise” these results. Impossible.

Their history of continued insistence on these policies, despite decades of data showing their “failure” to achieve their alleged objectives, demonstrates clearly that those aren’t in fact their objectives. They wouldn’t have continued for decades to pursue policies that weren’t successful in some important way. The “leading proponents of austerity” know whose interests they serve, and it’s not the people of the countries where these plans are being imposed.

There’s no reason to expect austerity plans to have consequences any different than they’re having in Europe. As the authors of the report themselves note, there was no reason to expect it going in. It’s irrational to think that the austerity czars didn’t know that. Social movements can’t afford to be diverted by these gullible narratives. They can’t afford to waste time on efforts to educate the people imposing austerity measures. They can’t afford to become complacent, thinking that surely now the IMF is recognizing its “failure” and will have to change course.