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The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans - and likely hundreds more - during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by
The Wall Street Journal."They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy," Roman Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot, told the newspaper in a report published Wednesday. "To hell with them."
Tritz said the orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned him to the floor, and he initially fought them off. A few weeks later, just before his 30th birthday, he was lobotomized.
Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals, according to the report.
The VA's use of lobotomy, in which doctors severed connections between parts of the brain then thought to control emotions, was known in medical circles in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and is occasionally cited in medical texts. But the VA's practice, never widely publicized, long ago slipped from public view. Even the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says it possesses no records detailing the creation and breadth of its lobotomy program.
The Wall Street Journal's reporting series began with Wednesday's
Forgotten Soldiers and included
a documentary, archived photos, maps and medical records.
Comment: The hubris of some people has no limits!