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January 1, 1973

Psychosurgery (1973)

Journal of the American Medical Association, 226(9) 1121.

To the Editor. THE JOURNAL (225:916, 1973) described me as “Undoubtedly the one person most responsible for politicizing psychosurgery ….” In this and a succeeding article (225:1035, 1973), the writer defends lobotomists and psychosurgeons and promotes their work as pure science unhappily corrupted by political attacks. Nothing could be further from the truth. The psychosurgeons offer no more ‘scientific’ evidence than they did in the first disastrous wave of lobotomies and as early as 1967 attempted to gain public and congressional support for their work by linking it to political fears of violent ghetto uprisings and, assassinations. I only entered the political arena as a counterforce to their own strenuous political campaign.

breggin p. (1973) psychosurgery ama ltr.pdf