Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 04:16:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Ben Schainker <shadrach@DGS.dgsys.com>
To: current-issues-in-psych@netcom.com
Subject: Forced Medical Review Panel
 
	The following is a copy of a speech I gave before the Maryland
State Legislature in Annapolis.  It was a review hearing of the Forced
Medication Law via Clinical Review Panel, as the 2 year sunset provision
had come up for the second time.  This law provides for the right of a
psychiatrist, who wants to administer chemicals to a committed mental
"patient" against their will in a non "emergency" situation, to call for a
"review panel" where his colleagues decide that their fellow "physician" 
should indeed be allowed to carry out their will on the hapless fellow. 
This is said to be the non-confrontational part of the process, and very
important if the "patient" is to feel that he/she is not being persecuted.
	If, for some irrational reason, the poor fellow thinks this was
not just, he/she is allowed to appeal to an Administrative Law Judge; who,
after an informal trial at the hospital in which the "patient's" doctor
acts as an expert witness, marks off a brief (sic) check list, says "they
(the doctors) are the experts, and leaves the down-trodden soul in the
inquisitor's eager hands.  The check list includes such niceties as: the
patient does have a mental illness, he/she presents a clear danger to
himself/herself/others, the administration of drugs will increase
time/chance of recovery, the risk to patient is
minimal/acceptable-in-light-of-benefits, etc. 
	The sunset provision means that the legislature is not sure
whether the law is on the up and up an so imposes a lease of the law on
the books.  In this case two years.  It was now being reviewed for the
second time to see if it should become permanent.
	The law previous to this one was deemed unconstitutional.
	With no further ado, here is my speech. 
 
 
----Begin Here------------------------------------------------------------
 
2/15/95
	As I come before you for the second time on the subject of the 
forced-clinical review panel, my heart is full of resignation.  At my 
previous attempt to sway you I tried something in the way of an emotional 
appeal; this go around I shall be harshly and undilutedly frank.
	It has been brought to my attention, that since we didn't send 
attractive lobbyists to take you by the hand and coddle you into making 
the right and moral choices, most honorable elected ones, the most we can 
ask of you is to reinstate the sunset provision.  This having been said 
I'll will make the rest of my argument as to why this, and all related 
laws based upon the wrong premise of forced treatment should be removed 
from the rolls of that which reflects our societal soul.
	Many of you probably feel this law to be an extension of crime 
bill legislation, with the advantage that it punishes nobody, mostly does 
not involve tax dollars, supposedly prevents welfare dollars from being 
spent, and gives all concerned (except for a few whining ex-patients) a 
nice moral buzz.  All of this, besides being factually wrong, is moreover 
morally wrong a well as being a load of crap!  It is of surpassing 
amazement to me, that with all the stupid laws we've inherited on the 
books today, this generation has managed to become so sight-twisted as to 
conceive laws making those of the past look like pillars of honor (except 
in the realm of mental hygiene where we make the disfiguring-tenets apply 
to more people).  While you can no doubt afford to take the easy way out, 
society as a whole cannot.  It's my considered opinion that even though 
you as individuals will probably be lost behind in the wrinkles of 
history, the straws you set down on our backs today will be the tinder of 
a future upheaval unparalleled by anything since the American Revolution, 
as it will occur for similar reasons.
	First off this law will do very little to curb crime.  The idea of
dangerousness used in this law has nothing to do with the committing of
crime as is conceived of in the constitution.  I, a former upper middle
class young man, who has never even gotten a driving ticket, ended up on
the ugly side (as if there is a non-ugly side) of this law.  Having said
that I think there is no one here more qualified to speak on this subject. 
After having a risk vs. benefit reductionist theory applied to my body, as
if my soul did not exist, contrary to stopping crime, it rose in me, for
the first time, the specter of killing someone.  Is it not ironic that
psychiatry, who has never proven its supposed facility to predict
dangerousness, proclaims every one they forcibly treat to be potentially
dangerous?  As for criminals who supposedly do come under this law, I hold
they should be handled by the criminal justice system.  Yeah that means
you'll have to do the work instead of palming it off on others.  But if
you continue dodging the bullet on this one you will rouse the worst type
of criminal...... Political Dissidents like Me!
	I will not bother trying to dissuade you from your illusion that
this law punishes nobody.  I know you will meet all appeals involving
personal atrocities of horror, anguish and repugnance, with stoic
indifference.  I will say, however, that the non-confrontational facade of
this law was, and is, a crock!  It has all the amiability of a spectacle
at the Roman Arenas, and unfortunately Caesar's thumb, due to some unnamed
social disease, is permanently locked in a downward position.  Et too
Brute'?
	As for how little tax dollars this will cost.... Society is
already starting to catch on to your game.  Does Insurance Mandates mean
anything to you?  It was a major cause of the loss of the health care
bills and thereby the election.  It is a tax pure and simple.  When was
the last time someone tallied up the cost of Mental Hygiene care?  I for
one do not have insurance, and will not consider signing up for insurance
until I can find one that included No mental "health" coverage, and has
all attributable costs removed from my policy.  You want it?  You pay for
it!  I will not partake in the victimization of this country much less
this state.
	As for medications keeping people off welfare.  I propose you do a
study of how many people who encounter psychiatry, and forced psychiatry
in particular end up on welfare.  In my experience these chemicals only
make one-time humans more helpless.  Besides psychiatry knows that once a
person's on welfare, the medicare and medicaid dollars start rolling in!
	Now let me see if I have made a dent in that moral buzz of yours. 
Can you say, "conflict of interest" three times fast?  Maybe this will
splash some cold water on your face.  After being put through, that which
the forced treatment laws made possible, I never felt more ashamed of the
state and country I lived in.  The more of the history of these laws I see
the more I come to realize that we are the progenitors of this evil in the
world.  I take very little pleasure from the society I live in, as I watch
it consistently confuse such easy concepts as:  entitlements and rights,
popular morality and absolute right and wrong, and most of all good and
evil.  We consistently pander for more and more short term uppers with the
only coinage we ultimately have left...... Our one time inalienable
rights.... Our belief in our own Self-governing souls.
	The only appeal I can make is this.  If you want to cull the human
herd be upright and honest about it.  Stop delegating it to smoky back
rooms that are out of our sight and definitely out of our minds.  I would
rather see snipers darting anyone who looks abnormal from helicopters,
like in Wild Kingdom, than this insidious claptrap of a law.  Allow
yourselves to be judged on your own vices and not the vices of some well
paid third party.
	Last night I was in a Mcdonald's Restaurant.  A man walking out
said something unintelligible to a young cop who looked fresh off the farm
and his friend who probably was not on the force, and then the man left. 
After a few moments the cop asked the girl who was taking his order what
that was about.  The girl replied that the man had said, "they
(Mcdonald's) were out of ice-cream."  After a second he asked her if she
wanted him to "check the man out".  She gave him a strange look and
replied in the negative.  The young cop probably wanted to show off to his
friend the most heady of police powers: the ability to put someone away
without any probable cause or due process just because they seemed
annoying, meaning in this case old, destitute, and unintelligible.  To me
this scene seems a thousand times more responsible than what you have been
doing.
	For those of you who felt a mosquito bite of misgiving during 
this oration, know now that is all that is needed to contract malaria.  
May all the diseases that afflict you be real.... for those that are not 
savage the soul the worst....  So may we all be blest.
 
					With Great Trepidation,
 
						-stuff deleted and added-
 
						B. Sane
						(301) 588-9608
						shadrach@dgs.dgsys.com