After Many Years the FDA Moves to Evaluate Electric Shocking of Disabled Persons

In support of using these electric shocking devices, a mother of a young man who is shocked is quoted. Why isn't the student who gets the shocks allowed to speak? Does his mother know better what is good for him? Only when the experts cannot find a professional is a relative allowed to speak for the disabled persons. Usually the parents are marginalized because they are not professionals. Then again when it comes to psychiatric illnesses everyone is an expert is allowed to make diagnoses. 

[From article]
The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to ban devices used by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts, the only place in the country known to use skin shocks as aversive conditioning for aggressive patients.
It's a rare move by the FDA, following years of complaints from disability rights' groups and even a U.N. report that the shocks are tantamount to torture.
FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says the shock therapy has raised a lot of questions.
[. . .]
Dr. Steven Miles, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, was one of several advisers concerned about the lack of scientific studies showing the shock therapy works. That only one treatment facility uses them, he said, makes it "unreasonable to conclude that these devices are part of the standard of care for this class of patients."

http://bostonherald.com/business/healthcare/2014/09/skin_shocks_used_at_mass_school_draw_fda_look

Skin shocks used at Mass. school draw FDA look
Sunday, September 14, 2014
By: Associated Press
Boston Herald