Treatment or Abuse?
In Boston Magazine's "The Shocking Truth," Paul Kix does a masterful job of investigating the use of electro-shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), a Massachusetts home for mentally handicapped and behaviorally impaired youth. The story explores the controversy surrounding the use of the machine, the only one of its kind in the country, and reaches some surprising conclusions. As Kix puts it, "Spend enough time around the machine and it will test everything you know about right and wrong." The writing is strong throughout the story. Here Kix describes the man who runs the home and invented the machine, known as the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or GED:
He is an unassuming old man, short and with a slight potbelly, rounded shoulders, half a head of curly white hair, and warm eyes. He looks as if he could be Fred Rogers's older brother. Matthew Israel, 75, is the founder and executive director of JRC, which he incorporated under a different name in 1971. Israel responded to questions for this article only by e-mail, but while watching the school's promotional video one notices the softness of Israel's voice, just above a whisper and even-toned, even while describing the GED's purpose. One notices the academic's indifference to dress: Israel often wears suits when he's photographed, but the tie droops a few inches below his belt line and the jacket fairly engulfs the tiny man. In Israel's writings on the school's website and in interviews he has given, one notices his dream, as grand as anyone's in Hollywood but documented and executed better than most scientists'. Matthew Israel is out to save those that society discards.
www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/the_shocking_truth/