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Article: Totalitarian medicine. The invention of the ADHD epidemic and the forced drugging of schoolchildren summon memories of the Soviet Union.(Education)
- Article from:
- The New American
- Article date:
- August 25, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 American Opinion Publishing, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Whatever the rationale, forcing people, particularly children, to take dangerous psychotropic drugs is a totalitarian practice. The use of state-imposed psychiatric treatment--including the forcible administration of mind-altering drugs--was one of the most terrifying practices used against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union.
Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky spent 12 years in the gulag, including a stint in the psihuska (psychiatric prison). In his memoir To Build a Castle, Bukovsky recalls that the regime "figured that it was impossible for people in a socialist society to have an anti-socialist consciousness." According to Soviet dogma, ...