Monday, May 19, 2008

Evidently The Department of Homeland Security Could Use My Mad DUR Skillz.

You know, if you're gonna involuntarily drug people, thereby breaking international law, quite possibly meeting the definition of torture, and most assuredly providing an answer to future questions of "Why do they hate us so much?"......could you at least get the dose right? From the Washington Post:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account.


This isn't the doping up of Guantanamo Bay prisoners I wrote about earlier. These are routine deportations. Non-terrorists.

Federal officials have seldom acknowledged publicly that they sedate people for deportation. The few times officials have spoken of the practice, they have understated it, portraying sedation as rare and "an act of last resort." Neither is true, records and interviews indicate.


What? A Federal official in the era of Bush saying something that is not true? Why, I've never heard of such a thing.

People taken into custody by the freedom loving government of the United States and involuntarily drugged when they have no history of violence or mental illness can at least rest assured that the drugs will be properly administered though, right?

Um, no.

Internal government records show that most sedated deportees, received a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states.


That would be the same Haldol that was used in Soviet "mental institutions" on political prisoners. I think every American can be proud of that.

They were also given Ativan, used to control anxiety, and all but three were given Cogentin, a medication that is supposed to lessen Haldol's side effects of muscle spasms and rigidity.

Asked to explain the reason for using Haldol and other psychotropic drugs with people who are not mentally ill, ICE responded, "The medications used by Aviation Medicine are widely used in psychiatry."


Thereby totally ignoring the fact that deporting a person with no mental illness is in no way considered the practice of psychiatry.

Agency officials said that medical escorts administer "the lowest dose possible." Combining Haldol and Ativan "allows you [to] use less of each," they said, and produces a quicker and longer sedative effect.


Allows you to use less of each he said.

typical doses to help psychotic patients accustomed to the drug are perhaps five to 15 milligrams a day. Several deportees were given a total of 30 milligrams, which (University of Toronto specialist in psychiatry and pharmacology Philip) Seeman characterized as "really high," especially for people who have never taken the drug before.

The Post's data shows two people were given over 40 mg. Allows you to use less of each he said. For Christ's sakes. It's like they're not even trying when they lie anymore.

Unwarranted Haldol is the kind of thing that happens when you suspend the rule of law and let policy be dictated by miscellaneous jack-offs on a power trip, and this is the type of thing that happens when you get the Haldol dose wrong:

Ade was being held down, he recalled, when he noticed a nurse "with a needle and a bottle with some kind of substance in it." He said he told the guards: "Okay, fine, fine. If it's going to be like this, don't inject me. I will go on my own free will."

The nurse went ahead, the log shows, injecting him in the left shoulder with two milligrams of a powerful drug, Haldol, used to treat psychosis, and one milligram of an anti-anxiety drug, Ativan. He was injected with two more rounds, as well as a third drug, in progressively larger doses, during the trip.

When he landed in Lagos, Nigeria, Afolabi Ade was unable to talk.

"Every time I tried to force myself to speak, I couldn't, because my tongue was . . . twisted. . . . I thought I was going to swallow it," Ade, 33, recalled in an interview. "I was nauseous. I was dizzy."

As he was being flown back to Africa, his American wife alerted his parents there that he was on his way. His father was waiting at the Lagos airport. It was the first time in three years that they had seen one another. Shocked by how woozy the young man was, his father decided not to take him home and frighten the rest of the family. Instead, he checked his son into a hotel.

Ade was in the hotel for four days before the effects of the drugs began to abate.


Yesterday the power tripping jack-offs were turned loose on people accused, but never convicted of, terrorism. It was done in secret and hidden for as long as possible.

Today it's people married to Americans and it's published in the Washington Post. It's OK though, because the people being abused have funny names.

Ask yourself who might have a little (or a lot) of Haldol in their future tomorrow. Ask yourself if drugging people who aren't sick is the kind of thing you want done in your name.

I'm guessing it's not, and I'm guessing it'll be a long way back from being the type of country that does such things.

Maybe we can start by getting the dose right.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

WTF is Aviation Medicine? Is that a real thing?

Anne said...

I don't know whether to cry or break something. Maybe both. For Goddess' sake, a B-52 (5 mg Haldol, 2 mg Ativan) is what rampaging psychotic patients get right after they're tied down into four-point restraints, and a lot of times that's overkill! Sometimes I wonder if we're in some bizarre dystopian movie, but then I think: if that were true, our evil geniuses would be a lot less...stupid.

Sarah said...

Wow. Stunned into Silence.

Anonymous said...

I am so disgusted...

Heather said...

You know how that song goes?

"And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free?" Apparently we're all lucky to be free of the shit our gov't does to others.

Terrorism comes in many forms. When will we realize that?

Madam Z said...

This is horrifying! What can we do to stop this practice? How can it be publicized?

Christine said...

Dear God that's terrible. I wonder how they would handle in flight neuroleptic malignant syndrome.

Never mind. I don't think I want to know.

Splat and Antisplat said...

For the love of God, this is a major clusterfuck. If -- *IF* -- none of those deported have suffered NMS (as Christine-Megan addressed) then they are some frigging lucky SOB's (Aviation Medicine) -- because I have just the last drop of optimism left in my body to believe that Karma (capital K) will come back and bite them in the ass. Fortunately, they were at least smart enough to toss them the Cogentin.

Kinda of surprised they didn't pass around a bottle of Benadryl instead.

Anonymous said...

Just when I thought I couldn't be any more ashamed to be an American, the Post shows me that I haven't hit bottom yet. This is unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

So, this is where the American society gets away with testing whethero or not penicillin works in those with syphilis, or determining if frontal lobotomies are a passing fad, whether or not IQ tests (or juvenile delinquency)are a valid measurements of the relationship of surgical infertility and fitness to bear children, and does it stop at 'agent orange', and Dr Mengel?

Anonymous said...

I've been kept for years on haloperidol, with no history of violence, I hated every second of it and pray my doctors get the same treatment in their next existence arrogant bastards. Once I was sectioned here in the UK because I said I was pissed off that 911 was an inside job.