Wow, that is really a terrible shame. ECT saved my grandfather's life. We were all nervous about it because of the bad marketing and myths out there (which in retrospect are likely perpetrated by scientology).

It was an overnight change after years of failed treatments. We had our Pop-Pop back.

You know, if the US removed the tax-exempt status from churches, the CoS would have way fewer resources to pull shit like this.

How come only those two companies build those medical devices?

How come Scientology can fuck with them like that?

Why do we still have religion and cults in positions of power?

Where is Shelly?

The Church of Scientology has a museum in Hollywood, CA called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death. They don't admit it's affiliated with the church- more on that later- it claims it's run by the "Citizens' Commission on Human Rights," which is one of their lobbying groups.

Right next to it is a restaurant called The Cat and Fiddle, which happened to be where an atheist social group I was a part of when I lived there met up once a month. So one day, we decide to go over. They make you give your name and address to go in, so we gave very obvious fake ones. We were followed by what were very clearly handlers pretending to be other museum-goers who just happened to be hanging out in the lobby when we came in and gave us the sort of pious smiles you often see from religious people when they're intentionally trying to do something shitty to you.

Once you are let in, they make you watch an incredibly boring movie which lasted about half an hour. It was so boring, I remember nothing about it except "psychiatry bad." The link I give above shows pictures of the very silly exhibits. Now on the subject of ECT, they literally blame the Holocaust on ECT. Like Germany was giving people ECT and that turned them into Nazis and that's how the Holocaust happened.

And then you get to the end with a bunch of plaques with their "advisors" and the names are names like John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Isaac Hayes... all the celebrities who are openly Scientologists. They didn't really hide their affiliation very well.

It was very amusing at the time, and they didn't charge us any money so we didn't feel like we were contributing to church bullshit, but it does feel a lot less amusing now.

This is low-hanging fruit for scientology because they actually paint it as scary.

Scientology's "war on psychiatry" is an accurate description because it's not that they do not believe in it - they believe its effects are evil. As in, yes, you should have to suffer with depression, and schizophrenia, and anxiety disorders. And then you treat it by joining their church where they basically institutionalize you the same way it was done prior to modern psychiatry.

I mean. Comparing modern ECTs to the shit from the 60s is like saying a doctor testing knee reflexes with the little hammer is the same as taking a sledgehammer to a kneecap...

Modern ECT is a godsend for the people it works for because a lot of times it's only tried when nothing else is quite working. Its a far cry from what it used to look like, and rallying against it's modern form is little different from rallying against cholesterol pills.

I'd like it if the reverse of this headline were the reality.

"Medical industry on the brink of killing entire scientology cult"

I was curious how scientology could harass companies into bankruptcy since that seemed like harassment. I couldn't turn up anything other than this article by searching for the companies names' and lawsuit or scientology.

It looks like there is a lobbying organization, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), funded by the church of scientology. They look to be funding lawsuits brought by individuals against the ECT device makers. The lawsuits against electronic therapy look to go back to the late 1960s.

This web page looks to be an anti-ECT propaganda page, but it covers their "victory" of bankrupting another ECT manufacturer and it covers their methodology for targeting them and for trying to get the practice banned. Although it is all likely BS, it's very clear on what their intentions are, so it's very informative reading even if it is propaganda.

I don't know enough about ECT to make any kind of informed decision on it, though I do generally trust moderm medicine as a whole. I was more interested in the legal process as it relates to the shared article, so take this as some threads to follow if you want to dive deeper than this article, not as me making any personal stance on ECT, since I know next to nothing about it.

Wasn't one of the faces of scientology just paid by the french government to star at the olympics?

And people wonder why I hate cults.

no wonder why people hate Scientology

Shelly Miscavige? Ummm. Must have uh.. uhh uhh.. misplaced uh. What?

When Balzac and Borpis join up with Scientology, they hold the line... of fake cocaine the church leaders gave them to expose leakers... But shit, still don't know what happened to Shelly

The biggest problem with Scientology is that it speaks to our politicians pockets. It's definitely and sickeningly on its way to becoming Yet Another Religion, and it does so under the cover for legislation that still allows exceptions from the law for cults even when their "fair game" policy is well-documented. It speaks volumes about why certain religious regimes are allowed to do what they do.

Scientology targets the mental health industry because that's the target base of their most ardent supporters, they are built on targeting the mentally ill and telling them "no, this isn't an illness you suffer that will require time and effort to treat and will always weigh on you, it's that you are special and channeling all of these thetans, which is just another name for spirit that makes it sound less recycled" and it gets intentionally crazier as you get to the higher tiers, which requires considerable wealth, so that only the most mentally ill reach it or the most manipulative do so, with the relatively normal people on the bottom trained to win intense staredown contests to make them seem imposing for the PR when they are just empty inside and suffering from a cultural and economical form of sunk cost fallacy.

The inventor of the lobotomy won a Nobel prize. Limitless Peace

so uh, why do they want this industry dead?

Not sure what to think about this. I hate Scientology, but I'm pretty iffy on ECT. My grandma had those treatments for years and it seemed to treat her anxiety by destroying her memory. I looked it up and treating anxiety with it is "controversial."

That doesn't make me an expert in it and maybe there are folks it does wonderful things for, but at least in her case they probably should've just loaded her up with Xanax. Not that that is a wonderful option either, but that was really all she wanted and I think she put up with the ECT to try to convince them she needed it.

So Scientology can get bent but I'll allow for the possibility that maybe the stopped clock could be right here. Or maybe you folks have all seen it work much better than I have.

Edit: I should make clear - science should be challenged by researchers, not Scientologists. That's how science works - withstand falsification. If this causes any non-idiots to look at the data and reaffirm the treatment, I'm for that. As stated, Scientology itself can get fucked and die in a fire.