I'm clearly not a medical professional, nor am I faced with being the caregiver for a non-ambulatory, disabled child. I can't even begin to imagine the challenges that parents in such a situation must have on a day to day basis, for years, with no respite.
That said, I cringed while reading the Wikipedia article on the Ashley Treatment. I know that you've mentioned this treatment briefly in another post in another thread,
@VoidCat, but at the time I had no idea as to what it entailed.
If there's any doubt as to the awfulness of this treatment done to children in the name of making life easier for both child and parent, then one doesn't have to go all that far back in history to read about what happened to 23-year-old Rosemary Kennedy back in 1941, when the medical procedure of lobotomies were then a popular form of "therapy" treatment for a wide range of mental disorders (including the "mood swings" that Rosemary Kennedy was said to have had).
Rosemary Kennedy was the younger sister of John F. Kennedy. She suffered from seizures (which some believed may have been epilepsy), as well as a mild form of mental retardation. But it was her behavior, as she began to sexually mature into an attractive young woman, that appeared mostly to concern her father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Senior -- a politician with ambitions and expectations for his sons in politics. The possibility of a scandal of a sexual nature involving his daughter was unacceptable to Joe Kennedy and his plans for a Kennedy dynasty.
So Joe arranged to have his daughter lobotomized. A tool resembling an ice pick was used to scramble poor Rosemary's brain to the extent that her personality was extinguished and she was rendered incontinent and disabled.
I think it's important to note that, back in the 1940s when lobotomy procedures were at their peak in the United States, the majority of those receiving lobotomies were women. Also, gay men made up a large number of the lobotomized. Dr. Walter Freeman, who had conducted Rosemary Kennedy's lobotomy, was also responsible for conducting lobotomies on 19 children -- one, a child as young as four years of age, and another having been a 12-year-old boy whose stepmother disliked him and had sent him to Dr. Freeman for "help."
I think that it is also important to note that, as early as 1941, the American Medical Association had denounced lobotomies as being ineffective, and most physicians expressed their abhorrence for the procedure. Sadly, the AMA's recommendations against the practice were only adopted by private mental institutions at the time, while government-funded public institutions continued the practice as a low-cost treatment option on patients who were effectively imprisoned in these institutions. Lobotomies fell out of favor by the 1960s and, if any lobotomies are being performed in the U.S. today then they must be very rare. The procedure is still legal in the U.S.
I don't know whether it's appropriate or fair to compare the history of lobotomies in this country with this relatively new Ashley Treatment, but both clearly merit scrutiny. The Wikipedia article that VoidCat linked doesn't say that the American Medical Association approves of this treatment, and it does say that disability rights activists are calling on the AMA to condemn the treatment. If anyone can find a statement regarding the AMA's official stand on the Ashley Treatment, I'd be interested to read it.
