Philly News Exchange

On August 9, 2004, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an offensive, apologetic article about lobotomy without letting any victims comment—only the doctors who are now trying to find ways to absolved of their terrible judgment.

Angry, I wrote the following email to the reporter:

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Hello Ms. Burling,

I saw your article regarding lobotomy in the paper. I wish you would have called us for a quote when you were writing it. Just because there were no other treatments for mental illness didn’t make lobotomy acceptable. History shows that people could and can get away with doing just about anything to psychiatric patients - no science required. Look up “focal infection theory” if you don’t believe me.

You also completely missed the fact that lobotomy was performed on thousands of people with “intractable pain”. The mother of one of our group members was lobotomized for headaches (while she was pregnant, mind you).

If you had bothered to ask I would have provided you with volumes of information proving that lobotomy was dubious science at best, even for the times. Any surgeon or psychiatrist who had bothered to read Egas Moniz’ monograph would have easily and quickly discerned that his operation was poorly planned, poorly managed, and his conclusions were bogus. This is the core of our battle against the Nobel Prize Committee. They, like many physicians at the time, were swept up in the media attention and promise of lobotomy.

…

Please check out our website, www.psychosurgery.org, and you will learn a great deal about this horrifying topic.

Sincerely,

Christine Johnson

Founder, Psychosurgery.org

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This was her response:

Thanks for your letter. I was asked to write a short, local story to go with a long LA Times story. I was hardly writing the definitive lobotomy story. The LA Times story is quite thorough.

You don’t say where your group is based.

Stacey Burling

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While Psychosurgery.org appreciates that Ms. Burling wasn’t writing an in-depth story, we must take issue with the dismissiveness shown. Perhaps it is a simple one-off story to this reporter, but to those of us involved with this issue, hastily written and researched articles are very annoying. How is the public to know that was just a “quickie” to the paper, and not the last word on lobotomy?