The prostitution of the German psychiatric profession into a Nazi
inquisitional tool was a major factor producing the total degradation of
German medicine and moral- ity. Its low point was its psychiatrists
killing the patients they were sworn to care for, and its other
physicians performing inhuman experiments on patients they were pledged
to treat. In America also, psychiatry has been performing some of the
functions of an In- quisition: injuring innocents, both patients and
dissenters, and exculpating crimi- nals, terrorists especially.
Innocents are being injured both in and out of psychiatric hospitals.
The in- creased fragmentation of care, the augmentation of its
discontinuities, and assign- ing the responsibility for organizing it to
non-medical managers are some of the fac- tors worsening the treatment
results of our hospitals. Wrongful deaths, due largely to the
specialty's intoxication with drugs while ignoring the importance of
common human decency, have become a national scandal.