--- In a public hearing before the New York State Assembly in July 2001, Harold claimed he had "never" seen a case of anterograde memory loss after ECT. (Anterograde refers to loss of memory function; retrograde refers to loss of memories, or amnesia.) He invited "anyone in the country" who had experienced such loss to "come in for an evaluation." Dozens of ECT survivors with anterograde memory loss contacted Harold. How many have been to Harold's facility for an evaluation? Not one. Harold backpedaled on his invitation as fast as he could the instant it became clear that survivors would, indeed, take him up on it. Those who've phoned, emailed or faxed Harold report that he either never responded, or simply told them----without meeting them or doing any testing or evaluation----that something other than ECT was to blame for their deficits. Drugs, other psychiatric treatments---whatever he could think of---must have caused the disability or brain damage, not ECT, he said. Therefore there was no need for an evaluation to see if ECT had done it. In one memorable case of a woman whose brain damage and permanent cognitive disability had already been well documented (and attributed to ECT) by her doctors, a lesser PR man than Harold might have been at somewhat of a loss as to what to say to her. The woman had never had any drugs, treatment, or mental illness after having ECT. So what caused her deficits? Harold wasn't stumped for an answer: why, it was the short period of Ýmental illness she'd experienced nearly two decades earlier, for which she was given ECT, that damaged her brain! "You're saying you believe mental illness causes brain damage?" asked the astounded woman. "We know it does," came the answer, quick as a con man's switch of the cards. He explained that he believes "depression itself, period" always causes brain damage even when successfully treated.

--- But stop the presses! It's not exactly correct to say Harold isn't gathering data on the incidence of retrograde and anterograde memory loss, and brain damage, due to electroshock. A member of his research team recently admitted that he does, in fact, test his research subjects Ýmemory and cognitive abilities before and after ECT. And although many of his tests are too easy or irrelevant to be useful, he does use at least one of the tests that ECT survivors have found relevant to our deficits. The catch: he's never published or disclosed any of the results of these tests, or even the fact that he administers them. Wonder why not? ÝAnd since he's using federal money to do the testing, how can he hide the results?

--- Much of Harold's grant money has gone, not into actual research, but into long "review" articles in which he selectively trashes everybody else's research. He did this is a 1993 article in which he dismissed the existing brain damage research, and in a 2000 article in which he trashed the memory loss research. In both articles he simply left out or distorted those published articles which say that ECT causes brain damage and memory loss.

--- For over a decade, Harold has expressed the opinion that research into whether ECT causes brain damage is "not of scientific interest", "uninteresting", and "unlikely to be funded."

A real scientist doesn't cut off entire areas of scientific investigation by fiat.

Sackeim is in a position not just to express this opinion, but also to enforce it, and that's exactly what he's done. By virtue of his role as a reviewer of every proposed ECT grant that comes into NIMH and other agencies that might fund ECT research, and by virtue of his position on the editorial boards of virtually all journals which publish ECT articles, Sackeim's arguably done more than any man in America to prevent a scientific investigation of ECT's effects on the brain from ever being funded or published.

Ironically, his lab at the New York State Psychiatric Institute is stocked with the latest brain imaging technology, technology that's available in only a handful of institutions in this country. Harold's got both the tools and the money to settle the question of whether ECT causes brain damage ---- but you see, that's what a scientist would do, and he's a PR man.

--- Harold does MRIs on his ECT patients routinely, but not to assess the effects of ECT! ÝHe uses the brain scans to help him learn how to design and use the giant magnet (or transcranial magnetic stimulation) machines from which is making a profit and stands to make a killing when and if they replace ECT machines! What a waste of costly MRI scans...paid for with our tax money. They could be used for science, to assess the effects of ECT on the brain, if someone would just read them for that purpose, instead of as a way to further Harold's career as a brain damage profiteer. (If you guessed that Harold's on the payroll of the magnet machine manufacturers such as Magstim, you're correct! He "consults" for them, gets grants from them, and how could he resist owning stock in them?)

--- He's also a consultant to the shock machine company Mecta, and has been since the mid 1980s. He's worked for shock machine company Somatics as well. He's even received grant money from Mecta. Federal law requires NIMH grantees to disclose actual or potential financial conflicts of interest, and requires that the conflicts be managed or eliminated. Sackeim has never disclosed his financial ties to the shock machine companies.

He does, however, disclose that he was on the board of Cambridge Neuroscience, a company that made a drug that was supposed to alleviate ECT's effects on memory. (It didn't.) Harold's position that ECT is safe and can't cause memory loss doesn't interfere with his eagerness to make a buck off that memory loss.

His biggest whopper, for which he is justly infamous, is this one:

ECT improves memory. This statement appears in the APA consent form and many other consent forms, such as the one recently adopted by the state of Vermont. When Harold first came out with this line in the early 90s, ECT survivors laughed, figuring it was some kind of sick joke.

But no one else is laughing.