GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: “Anti-psychiatry” gets official recognition at U of Toronto

domingo, 15 de enero de 2017

BioEdge: “Anti-psychiatry” gets official recognition at U of Toronto

BioEdge: “Anti-psychiatry” gets official recognition at U of Toronto
Bioedge

“Anti-psychiatry” gets official recognition at U of Toronto

by Michael Cook | 14 Jan 2017 |

An institute at the University of Toronto has established the world’s first scholarship for anti-psychiatry. Bonnie Burstow, an anti-psychiatry activist, has endowed a matching scholarship for a research student at the UT’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
According to a University press release, “The scholarship is being materialized at an opportune time. Key academics have demonstrated the enormous harm done by psychiatry … we have arrived at a moment where imminent action is called for, for we are now facing ‘an epidemic of iatrogenic [doctor-created] illness’.”
The initiative has come under fire in the Canadian press. National Post columnist Barbara Kay was savage in her criticism:

Real scholarship is “for” truth. The whole idea of any scholarly field being called “anti” anything is bizarre, and runs counter to the raison d’être of the university. The prefix “anti” tells us that Burstow’s program is merely organized political activism with OISE’s endorsement and the use of their resources. And her stated goal, to “spur alternate ways of arranging society so that we aren’t inventing diseases,” contains a demonstrable lie in the service of an extreme social-engineering agenda.

However, the University says that conventional psychiatry already has abundant resources. “Equity and academic freedom themselves require that antipsychiatry scholars, including exceptional ones, have more equitable access to scholarship support.”
Dr Burstow explains in the video above that her movement is calling for the abolition of psychiatry. It is linked to the critiques by R.T. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Michel Foucault of the oppressive role of psychiatry in modern society.

Transplant surgeons in Belgium and the Netherlands are already harvesting organs from patients who have requested euthanasia. Could this happen in Canada, the new kid on the euthanasia block? Perhaps. In a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, two bioethicists from Quebec argue that organ donor euthanasia is a homage to autonomy and needs to be legalised. Apparently the Quebec government and the society of transplant surgeons in Quebec are also on board.

Of all the bad ideas associated with euthanasia, this must be one of the worst. The potential for exploiting vulnerable people is immense. Imagine that you are a quadriplegic. Your organs are healthy; you are lonely, frustrated, discouraged. You see a TV program in which a doctor praises the unforgettable generosity of So-and-so whose life was not worth living but found a way to give life to others, etc, etc. Wouldn't you think of ringing up the doctor and asking him how to go about it?

Will Canada be able to stop this from happening?