Glad we live in modern day medicine!

[Guest guest]

Should they de-Nobel Moniz?

What happens when a Nobel prize winner is subsequently exposed as a fraud?

Nothing, apparently

Sutherland

Monday August 2, 2004

The Guardian

In the British army, when an officer was drummed out, his epaulettes would

be ceremonially ripped from his uniform. Priests are defrocked and enter the

secular world in their underpants. Lawyers are disbarred and doctors struck

off. But no one, as far as I know, has ever been de-Nobelled - stripped,

that is, of the Nobel prize. Like the Soviet government (as Solzhenitsyn

wryly put it), Stockholm's motto is: " We never make mistakes. "

In one egregious case, the committee did err. And, if the campaign to

de-Nobel Egas Moniz succeeds, Portugal - having a lousy year, what with Euro

2004 and its forest fires - will lose one of its two laureates (the other,

novelist Saramago, seems safe enough).

Moniz invented human lobotomy in 1935. American surgeons had earlier

observed that if you hacked the frontal lobes off chimpanzees' brains, the

primates stopped jumping round the monkey house. The 1930s was a time when

the medical profession was unimpeded by petty restrictions. In Tuskegee in

1932, hundreds of black American suffering from syphilis were denied drugs

to see what happened. They got very sick.

Moniz - despite the lack of surgical expertise - went to work on the

(unconsenting and mainly female) inmates of Lisbon's asylums. As with the

chimps, the results were dramatic. Moniz trumpeted to the world the

beneficial effects of lobotomy. He duly got his Nobel prize in 1949. He was,

the committee said, " a wonderful man " . Not all of his patients agreed;

Moniz's career as a psychosurgeon ended when an ungrateful lobotomee shot

him, shattering his spine.

The operation was popularised in the US by Walter Freeman who trundled round

the states in his " lobotomobile " , demonstrating his " ice pick and hammer

technique " to any hospital that would let him into their operating theatre.

Failing that, he would operate in hotel rooms, lobotomising children for

" delinquent behaviour " and housewives who had lost the will to do the

washing-up.

Freeman is immortalised in the the 1982 biopic Frances, where the heroine

(played by Lange) is given the works in front of an admiring

audience by a mallet- and ice pick-wielding Freeman boasting he can do 10 an

hour and " lobotomy gets 'em home. "

Most, one gathers, came home vegetables - at best Stepfordized; at worst,

zombies (Frances Farmer was the latter). The asylums loved lobotomy: it cost

a mere $250 and kept the noise down in the wards.

Protest came from some unlikely places: notably the USSR (which preferred

overdosing its inconvenient citizens with psychotropic drugs) and L Ron

Hubbard's Scientologists. But mostly, it was the writers and film-makers who

got across to the public the full horror of carving up the human brain like

a Thanksgiving turkey. Lobotomy inspired Tennessee 's 1958 play,

Suddenly Last Summer (just ending a successful West End revival).

had a sister who had undergone the operation. He knew, too, that it was

sometimes inflicted on gays - to render them " morally sane " . Ken Kesey won a

Pulitzer in 1962 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the hero,

Randle Mc, is lobotomised because Big Nurse simply can't stand his

unruly behaviour.

By 1975, when the -winning film starring Jack Nicholson came out,

lobotomy was history. Freeman had lost his surgeon's licence in 1965, after

killing a patient with his icepick. But Moniz (who died in 1955) still has

his Nobel prize. The campaign to strip him of it has been led by

, who had a close relative destroyed by lobotomy and has mobilised on

her website (psychosurgery.org) a powerful lobby of victims and their

families. The Nobel Foundation wrote to a couple of weeks ago

declining to withdraw the award - although they declare themselves relieved

that " the medical profession can today offer much more humane and effective

therapies for the severely mentally ill patients " .

Should they de-Nobel Moniz? A no-brainer, I'd say.

[Guest guest]

A chilling little piece, a. I believe they should withdraw the

award, but, if they did, I'm sure that would create a nasty problem for

the Nobel Foundation in that they may be forced to review the cases of

other undeserving recipients, particularly of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'll tell you where to go!

Mayo Clinic in Rochester

http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

s Hopkins Medicine

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org

[ ] Glad we live in modern day medicine!

> Should they de-Nobel Moniz?

>

> What happens when a Nobel prize winner is subsequently exposed as a

fraud?

> Nothing, apparently

>

> Sutherland

> Monday August 2, 2004

> The Guardian

>

> In the British army, when an officer was drummed out, his epaulettes

would

> be ceremonially ripped from his uniform. Priests are defrocked and

enter the

> secular world in their underpants. Lawyers are disbarred and doctors

struck

> off. But no one, as far as I know, has ever been de-Nobelled -

stripped,

> that is, of the Nobel prize. Like the Soviet government (as

Solzhenitsyn

> wryly put it), Stockholm's motto is: " We never make mistakes. "

>

> In one egregious case, the committee did err. And, if the campaign to

> de-Nobel Egas Moniz succeeds, Portugal - having a lousy year, what

with Euro

> 2004 and its forest fires - will lose one of its two laureates (the

other,

> novelist Saramago, seems safe enough).

>

> Moniz invented human lobotomy in 1935. American surgeons had earlier

> observed that if you hacked the frontal lobes off chimpanzees' brains,

the

> primates stopped jumping round the monkey house. The 1930s was a time

when

> the medical profession was unimpeded by petty restrictions. In

Tuskegee in

> 1932, hundreds of black American suffering from syphilis were denied

drugs

> to see what happened. They got very sick.

>

> Moniz - despite the lack of surgical expertise - went to work on the

> (unconsenting and mainly female) inmates of Lisbon's asylums. As with

the

> chimps, the results were dramatic. Moniz trumpeted to the world the

> beneficial effects of lobotomy. He duly got his Nobel prize in 1949.

He was,

> the committee said, " a wonderful man " . Not all of his patients agreed;

> Moniz's career as a psychosurgeon ended when an ungrateful lobotomee

shot

> him, shattering his spine.

>

> The operation was popularised in the US by Walter Freeman who trundled

round

> the states in his " lobotomobile " , demonstrating his " ice pick and

hammer

> technique " to any hospital that would let him into their operating

theatre.

> Failing that, he would operate in hotel rooms, lobotomising children

for

> " delinquent behaviour " and housewives who had lost the will to do the

> washing-up.

>

> Freeman is immortalised in the the 1982 biopic Frances, where the

heroine

> (played by Lange) is given the works in front of an admiring

> audience by a mallet- and ice pick-wielding Freeman boasting he can do

10 an

> hour and " lobotomy gets 'em home. "

>

> Most, one gathers, came home vegetables - at best Stepfordized; at

worst,

> zombies (Frances Farmer was the latter). The asylums loved lobotomy:

it cost

> a mere $250 and kept the noise down in the wards.

>

> Protest came from some unlikely places: notably the USSR (which

preferred

> overdosing its inconvenient citizens with psychotropic drugs) and L

Ron

> Hubbard's Scientologists. But mostly, it was the writers and

film-makers who

> got across to the public the full horror of carving up the human brain

like

> a Thanksgiving turkey. Lobotomy inspired Tennessee 's 1958

play,

> Suddenly Last Summer (just ending a successful West End revival).

> had a sister who had undergone the operation. He knew, too, that it

was

> sometimes inflicted on gays - to render them " morally sane " . Ken Kesey

won a

> Pulitzer in 1962 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the

hero,

> Randle Mc, is lobotomised because Big Nurse simply can't stand

his

> unruly behaviour.

>

> By 1975, when the -winning film starring Jack Nicholson came out,

> lobotomy was history. Freeman had lost his surgeon's licence in 1965,

after

> killing a patient with his icepick. But Moniz (who died in 1955) still

has

> his Nobel prize. The campaign to strip him of it has been led by

> , who had a close relative destroyed by lobotomy and has

mobilised on

> her website (psychosurgery.org) a powerful lobby of victims and their

> families. The Nobel Foundation wrote to a couple of weeks ago

> declining to withdraw the award - although they declare themselves

relieved

> that " the medical profession can today offer much more humane and

effective

> therapies for the severely mentally ill patients " .

>

> Should they de-Nobel Moniz? A no-brainer, I'd say.

[Guest guest]

A chilling little piece, a. I believe they should withdraw the

award, but, if they did, I'm sure that would create a nasty problem for

the Nobel Foundation in that they may be forced to review the cases of

other undeserving recipients, particularly of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'll tell you where to go!

Mayo Clinic in Rochester

http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

s Hopkins Medicine

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org

[ ] Glad we live in modern day medicine!

> Should they de-Nobel Moniz?

>

> What happens when a Nobel prize winner is subsequently exposed as a

fraud?

> Nothing, apparently

>

> Sutherland

> Monday August 2, 2004

> The Guardian

>

> In the British army, when an officer was drummed out, his epaulettes

would

> be ceremonially ripped from his uniform. Priests are defrocked and

enter the

> secular world in their underpants. Lawyers are disbarred and doctors

struck

> off. But no one, as far as I know, has ever been de-Nobelled -

stripped,

> that is, of the Nobel prize. Like the Soviet government (as

Solzhenitsyn

> wryly put it), Stockholm's motto is: " We never make mistakes. "

>

> In one egregious case, the committee did err. And, if the campaign to

> de-Nobel Egas Moniz succeeds, Portugal - having a lousy year, what

with Euro

> 2004 and its forest fires - will lose one of its two laureates (the

other,

> novelist Saramago, seems safe enough).

>

> Moniz invented human lobotomy in 1935. American surgeons had earlier

> observed that if you hacked the frontal lobes off chimpanzees' brains,

the

> primates stopped jumping round the monkey house. The 1930s was a time

when

> the medical profession was unimpeded by petty restrictions. In

Tuskegee in

> 1932, hundreds of black American suffering from syphilis were denied

drugs

> to see what happened. They got very sick.

>

> Moniz - despite the lack of surgical expertise - went to work on the

> (unconsenting and mainly female) inmates of Lisbon's asylums. As with

the

> chimps, the results were dramatic. Moniz trumpeted to the world the

> beneficial effects of lobotomy. He duly got his Nobel prize in 1949.

He was,

> the committee said, " a wonderful man " . Not all of his patients agreed;

> Moniz's career as a psychosurgeon ended when an ungrateful lobotomee

shot

> him, shattering his spine.

>

> The operation was popularised in the US by Walter Freeman who trundled

round

> the states in his " lobotomobile " , demonstrating his " ice pick and

hammer

> technique " to any hospital that would let him into their operating

theatre.

> Failing that, he would operate in hotel rooms, lobotomising children

for

> " delinquent behaviour " and housewives who had lost the will to do the

> washing-up.

>

> Freeman is immortalised in the the 1982 biopic Frances, where the

heroine

> (played by Lange) is given the works in front of an admiring

> audience by a mallet- and ice pick-wielding Freeman boasting he can do

10 an

> hour and " lobotomy gets 'em home. "

>

> Most, one gathers, came home vegetables - at best Stepfordized; at

worst,

> zombies (Frances Farmer was the latter). The asylums loved lobotomy:

it cost

> a mere $250 and kept the noise down in the wards.

>

> Protest came from some unlikely places: notably the USSR (which

preferred

> overdosing its inconvenient citizens with psychotropic drugs) and L

Ron

> Hubbard's Scientologists. But mostly, it was the writers and

film-makers who

> got across to the public the full horror of carving up the human brain

like

> a Thanksgiving turkey. Lobotomy inspired Tennessee 's 1958

play,

> Suddenly Last Summer (just ending a successful West End revival).

> had a sister who had undergone the operation. He knew, too, that it

was

> sometimes inflicted on gays - to render them " morally sane " . Ken Kesey

won a

> Pulitzer in 1962 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the

hero,

> Randle Mc, is lobotomised because Big Nurse simply can't stand

his

> unruly behaviour.

>

> By 1975, when the -winning film starring Jack Nicholson came out,

> lobotomy was history. Freeman had lost his surgeon's licence in 1965,

after

> killing a patient with his icepick. But Moniz (who died in 1955) still

has

> his Nobel prize. The campaign to strip him of it has been led by

> , who had a close relative destroyed by lobotomy and has

mobilised on

> her website (psychosurgery.org) a powerful lobby of victims and their

> families. The Nobel Foundation wrote to a couple of weeks ago

> declining to withdraw the award - although they declare themselves

relieved

> that " the medical profession can today offer much more humane and

effective

> therapies for the severely mentally ill patients " .

>

> Should they de-Nobel Moniz? A no-brainer, I'd say.

[Guest guest]

I have to agree with you . They are not going to rock that boat.

a

> A chilling little piece, a. I believe they should withdraw the

> award, but, if they did, I'm sure that would create a nasty problem for

> the Nobel Foundation in that they may be forced to review the cases of

> other undeserving recipients, particularly of the Nobel Peace Prize.

>

>

>

>

> I'll tell you where to go!

>

> Mayo Clinic in Rochester

> http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

>

> s Hopkins Medicine

> http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org

>

>

> [ ] Glad we live in modern day medicine!

>

>

>> Should they de-Nobel Moniz?

>>

>> What happens when a Nobel prize winner is subsequently exposed as a

> fraud?

>> Nothing, apparently

>>

>> Sutherland

>> Monday August 2, 2004

>> The Guardian

>>

>> In the British army, when an officer was drummed out, his epaulettes

> would

>> be ceremonially ripped from his uniform. Priests are defrocked and

> enter the

>> secular world in their underpants. Lawyers are disbarred and doctors

> struck

>> off. But no one, as far as I know, has ever been de-Nobelled -

> stripped,

>> that is, of the Nobel prize. Like the Soviet government (as

> Solzhenitsyn

>> wryly put it), Stockholm's motto is: " We never make mistakes. "

>>

>> In one egregious case, the committee did err. And, if the campaign to

>> de-Nobel Egas Moniz succeeds, Portugal - having a lousy year, what

> with Euro

>> 2004 and its forest fires - will lose one of its two laureates (the

> other,

>> novelist Saramago, seems safe enough).

>>

>> Moniz invented human lobotomy in 1935. American surgeons had earlier

>> observed that if you hacked the frontal lobes off chimpanzees' brains,

> the

>> primates stopped jumping round the monkey house. The 1930s was a time

> when

>> the medical profession was unimpeded by petty restrictions. In

> Tuskegee in

>> 1932, hundreds of black American suffering from syphilis were denied

> drugs

>> to see what happened. They got very sick.

>>

>> Moniz - despite the lack of surgical expertise - went to work on the

>> (unconsenting and mainly female) inmates of Lisbon's asylums. As with

> the

>> chimps, the results were dramatic. Moniz trumpeted to the world the

>> beneficial effects of lobotomy. He duly got his Nobel prize in 1949.

> He was,

>> the committee said, " a wonderful man " . Not all of his patients agreed;

>> Moniz's career as a psychosurgeon ended when an ungrateful lobotomee

> shot

>> him, shattering his spine.

>>

>> The operation was popularised in the US by Walter Freeman who trundled

> round

>> the states in his " lobotomobile " , demonstrating his " ice pick and

> hammer

>> technique " to any hospital that would let him into their operating

> theatre.

>> Failing that, he would operate in hotel rooms, lobotomising children

> for

>> " delinquent behaviour " and housewives who had lost the will to do the

>> washing-up.

>>

>> Freeman is immortalised in the the 1982 biopic Frances, where the

> heroine

>> (played by Lange) is given the works in front of an admiring

>> audience by a mallet- and ice pick-wielding Freeman boasting he can do

> 10 an

>> hour and " lobotomy gets 'em home. "

>>

>> Most, one gathers, came home vegetables - at best Stepfordized; at

> worst,

>> zombies (Frances Farmer was the latter). The asylums loved lobotomy:

> it cost

>> a mere $250 and kept the noise down in the wards.

>>

>> Protest came from some unlikely places: notably the USSR (which

> preferred

>> overdosing its inconvenient citizens with psychotropic drugs) and L

> Ron

>> Hubbard's Scientologists. But mostly, it was the writers and

> film-makers who

>> got across to the public the full horror of carving up the human brain

> like

>> a Thanksgiving turkey. Lobotomy inspired Tennessee 's 1958

> play,

>> Suddenly Last Summer (just ending a successful West End revival).

>

>> had a sister who had undergone the operation. He knew, too, that it

> was

>> sometimes inflicted on gays - to render them " morally sane " . Ken Kesey

> won a

>> Pulitzer in 1962 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the

> hero,

>> Randle Mc, is lobotomised because Big Nurse simply can't stand

> his

>> unruly behaviour.

>>

>> By 1975, when the -winning film starring Jack Nicholson came out,

>> lobotomy was history. Freeman had lost his surgeon's licence in 1965,

> after

>> killing a patient with his icepick. But Moniz (who died in 1955) still

> has

>> his Nobel prize. The campaign to strip him of it has been led by

>

>> , who had a close relative destroyed by lobotomy and has

> mobilised on

>> her website (psychosurgery.org) a powerful lobby of victims and their

>> families. The Nobel Foundation wrote to a couple of weeks ago

>> declining to withdraw the award - although they declare themselves

> relieved

>> that " the medical profession can today offer much more humane and

> effective

>> therapies for the severely mentally ill patients " .

>>

>> Should they de-Nobel Moniz? A no-brainer, I'd say.

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

I have to agree with you . They are not going to rock that boat.

a

> A chilling little piece, a. I believe they should withdraw the

> award, but, if they did, I'm sure that would create a nasty problem for

> the Nobel Foundation in that they may be forced to review the cases of

> other undeserving recipients, particularly of the Nobel Peace Prize.

>

>

>

>

> I'll tell you where to go!

>

> Mayo Clinic in Rochester

> http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

>

> s Hopkins Medicine

> http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org

>

>

> [ ] Glad we live in modern day medicine!

>

>

>> Should they de-Nobel Moniz?

>>

>> What happens when a Nobel prize winner is subsequently exposed as a

> fraud?

>> Nothing, apparently

>>

>> Sutherland

>> Monday August 2, 2004

>> The Guardian

>>

>> In the British army, when an officer was drummed out, his epaulettes

> would

>> be ceremonially ripped from his uniform. Priests are defrocked and

> enter the

>> secular world in their underpants. Lawyers are disbarred and doctors

> struck

>> off. But no one, as far as I know, has ever been de-Nobelled -

> stripped,

>> that is, of the Nobel prize. Like the Soviet government (as

> Solzhenitsyn

>> wryly put it), Stockholm's motto is: " We never make mistakes. "

>>

>> In one egregious case, the committee did err. And, if the campaign to

>> de-Nobel Egas Moniz succeeds, Portugal - having a lousy year, what

> with Euro

>> 2004 and its forest fires - will lose one of its two laureates (the

> other,

>> novelist Saramago, seems safe enough).

>>

>> Moniz invented human lobotomy in 1935. American surgeons had earlier

>> observed that if you hacked the frontal lobes off chimpanzees' brains,

> the

>> primates stopped jumping round the monkey house. The 1930s was a time

> when

>> the medical profession was unimpeded by petty restrictions. In

> Tuskegee in

>> 1932, hundreds of black American suffering from syphilis were denied

> drugs

>> to see what happened. They got very sick.

>>

>> Moniz - despite the lack of surgical expertise - went to work on the

>> (unconsenting and mainly female) inmates of Lisbon's asylums. As with

> the

>> chimps, the results were dramatic. Moniz trumpeted to the world the

>> beneficial effects of lobotomy. He duly got his Nobel prize in 1949.

> He was,

>> the committee said, " a wonderful man " . Not all of his patients agreed;

>> Moniz's career as a psychosurgeon ended when an ungrateful lobotomee

> shot

>> him, shattering his spine.

>>

>> The operation was popularised in the US by Walter Freeman who trundled

> round

>> the states in his " lobotomobile " , demonstrating his " ice pick and

> hammer

>> technique " to any hospital that would let him into their operating

> theatre.

>> Failing that, he would operate in hotel rooms, lobotomising children

> for

>> " delinquent behaviour " and housewives who had lost the will to do the

>> washing-up.

>>

>> Freeman is immortalised in the the 1982 biopic Frances, where the

> heroine

>> (played by Lange) is given the works in front of an admiring

>> audience by a mallet- and ice pick-wielding Freeman boasting he can do

> 10 an

>> hour and " lobotomy gets 'em home. "

>>

>> Most, one gathers, came home vegetables - at best Stepfordized; at

> worst,

>> zombies (Frances Farmer was the latter). The asylums loved lobotomy:

> it cost

>> a mere $250 and kept the noise down in the wards.

>>

>> Protest came from some unlikely places: notably the USSR (which

> preferred

>> overdosing its inconvenient citizens with psychotropic drugs) and L

> Ron

>> Hubbard's Scientologists. But mostly, it was the writers and

> film-makers who

>> got across to the public the full horror of carving up the human brain

> like

>> a Thanksgiving turkey. Lobotomy inspired Tennessee 's 1958

> play,

>> Suddenly Last Summer (just ending a successful West End revival).

>

>> had a sister who had undergone the operation. He knew, too, that it

> was

>> sometimes inflicted on gays - to render them " morally sane " . Ken Kesey

> won a

>> Pulitzer in 1962 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the

> hero,

>> Randle Mc, is lobotomised because Big Nurse simply can't stand

> his

>> unruly behaviour.

>>

>> By 1975, when the -winning film starring Jack Nicholson came out,

>> lobotomy was history. Freeman had lost his surgeon's licence in 1965,

> after

>> killing a patient with his icepick. But Moniz (who died in 1955) still

> has

>> his Nobel prize. The campaign to strip him of it has been led by

>

>> , who had a close relative destroyed by lobotomy and has

> mobilised on

>> her website (psychosurgery.org) a powerful lobby of victims and their

>> families. The Nobel Foundation wrote to a couple of weeks ago

>> declining to withdraw the award - although they declare themselves

> relieved

>> that " the medical profession can today offer much more humane and

> effective

>> therapies for the severely mentally ill patients " .

>>

>> Should they de-Nobel Moniz? A no-brainer, I'd say.

>

>

>

>