"The new lobotomy?"

Today's cover story at the The Tyee is "The new lobotomy?", an article by Canadian journalist Danielle Egan. The article takes a much more interesting and critical look at DBS (deep brain stimulation) than most articles on the subject do.

"Eights months ago, surgeons drilled two holes into the skull of a wide-awake Vancouver man and inserted spaghetti-sized electrical wires down through the two sides of his frontal lobes. They left behind a remote control brain pacemaker, which regularly shocks his brain with three volts of electricity, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, powered by a battery pack that sits on his neck. The device is meant to treat his severe depression. It's part of a controversial clinical trial of a procedure called deep brain stimulation (DBS) that's jointly run by UBC and VGH, and being partly funded by B.C. health care.

As part of the trial, which is co-sponsored by a Texas-based medical device manufacturer, researchers will also implant five other British Columbia patients through a multi-centre trial also happening in Toronto and Montreal. DBS is also being tested at centres all over the globe, as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, eating disorders, addictions and even violent behaviour. But emerging data on this new technology is raising questions about the effectiveness of the procedure, the link between health care and profits, and the ethics of quick-fix psychological treatments....

It's the same physiological rationale used to describe lobotomies and their modern counterparts, known as psychiatric neurosurgeries, which are said to be making a comeback at select centres round the globe, including a UBC program started in 2000. DBS is being held up as a good alternative to psychiatric neurosurgeries, because it doesn't involve permanently destroying pieces of the brain, and because the device can be turned off." (more...)