Where was the fact checker at Oxford University Press? This slight (barely 100 pages of text) book is full of errors that could have been corrected easily, in most cases with one phone call. That no one bothered to do so seems deliberate, not inadvertent, in that the false statements are tailored to the book's overarching big lie, the one Max Fink has spent 50 years defending: that ECT is harmless to brain and memory.

Fink doesn't disclose anywhere in this book that he has a financial relationship with at least one company that manufacturers electroshock machines, Somatics Corp.; he made a promotional video from them and gets royalties from each sale. Fink also makes money from selling tickets to five-day shock seminars, from testifying and consulting for defendants in ECT memory loss lawsuits, and from giving ECT himself.

Fink is so sloppy he can't be even be bothered to be consistent with his own prior writings. Compare his description of the first convulsive treatment with his writings in numerous other places, and you'll find dates and details changed.

But for the most part, Fink's are not careless, trivial errors. They're deliberate. I say this because his facts are distorted----twisted, bent, inverted, invented---in the service of his argument that ECT is, as he once put it, "God's gift to mankindî.

Look at how he skewers the facts about the FDA's classification of the electroshock device. The truth is that the FDA has ruled that shock machines are Class III medical devices, meaning that their safety has not been proven. (Shock machines are only allowed on the market at all because they were already in use at the time the FDA gained jurisdiction over medical devices. If the shock machine were just coming onto the market today, it would not be allowed to be used.)

Fink writes: "In the brouhaha over the revival of ECT in the 1970s, the anti-ECT lobby tried to persuade the FDA to limit the sale and use of ECT devices in the United States." In fact FDA's involvement with the device had nothing to do with a claimed "revival" of ECT, but was mandated by the 1976 Medical Devices Amendments law. No one asked or tried to persuade the FDA to limit the sale and use of the devices. A rating has no effect on sale or use; it simply has to do with the risk-benefit assessment of a device, and the degree of oversight needed to minimize risks. "In the early 1980s," Fink goes on, "the FDA ruled that the devices were safe and reliable."

FDA doesn't issue rulings like that. The FDA's ruling, which was published in 1979 and still stands, states that shock machines present a potential unreasonable risk of injury or harm, and that the risks include brain damage and memory loss.

Fink also lies about facts well known to him in the section about ECT survivor Marilyn Rice. Marilyn founded the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, a national consumer advocacy organization whose sole purpose is to advocate for truthful informed consent to ECT. She and Fink knew each other personally, and had numerous interactions over a period of 20 years.

"She had pain in her teeth that was not relieved by extensive dental careî, he claims; actually she sought to have her teeth straightened, and only had pain only later as a result of botched treatment. "When the pain persisted, she sought psychiatric help but got no relief from psychotherapy or medicines."

She sought help as a result of the physical and mental stress of painful dental treatment affecting her ability to eat.

"At that point, she was referred for ECT. After it was administered, her dental pains disappeared, but she complained that all memory of her past and her profession had also disappeared."

In fact her dental pains continued, unaffected by ECT. Her distress over disfiguring dental work was compounded by years of memory loss and the resulting loss of her career. Finally, Fink claims Marilyn founded an organization called "Committee Against Assault in Psychiatry."

When Fink completely leaves out unflattering facts rather than distorting them, the unsuspecting reader is at even more of a disadvantage. He omits 60 years of research documenting brain damage in animals and humans, extensive permanent amnesia, and permanent cognitive disability associated with ECT. You won't find any citations for claims like "There is no longer any validity to the fear that electroshock will erase memory " because there's no basis for that statement; it's simply Fink's highly biased opinion. "Sometimes a patient fears that electroshock will impair the skills that are the basis of her livelihood. That fear is groundless. It was the mental illness, not the treatment, that impaired her knowledge," Fink continues, in classic victim-blaming fashion. But he can't explain why former ECT patients long recovered from mental illness report years of permanent memory loss and experience daily memory disability.

It's important to understand the kind of hocus-focus Fink is selling. When he claims that ECT does not erase memory, what he really means is that he, Max Fink, refuses to attribute such memory loss to ECT, therefore it does not occur. After all, his own patients report permanent and extensive amnesia. One appeared on a TV news show to describe how it felt to be a "stranger" to her husband of many years after shock; another young woman suffered such disabling cognitive deficits that she's currently in a brain injury rehabilitation program. Fink simply told this patient that she must have had a stroke without realizing it, since ECT couldn't cause such an outcome.

Fink admits that he does not follow up his patients for months or years after ECT. On what then does he base his opinions as to its permanent effects on memory and cognition?

"Electroshock" is a work of propaganda, not science. Oxford owes its readers a retraction and an apology.

LADirector of CTIP