STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, JULY 12, 2010…..Senators preparing to debate shock therapy -- a practice that one senator has decried as “torture” and that a House chairman has said saved his nephew’s life – may have to wait, after a procedural move by Republicans prevented a pair of related bills from being placed on Tuesday’s calendar.
 
Sen. Richard Ross (R-Wrentham) objected during Monday’s Senate session to taking up amendments to the two bills during an informal session, preventing the bills from appearing on the Senate calendar for Tuesday's formal session. Ross said after the session that he objected on behalf of minority leadership.
 
Republican aides say the move to block consideration of the bills Monday would give them the option of further delay on Tuesday if minority party members want more time to examine the often-contentious proposals. One of the proposals (S 45) would set restrictions on who may administer aversive therapy and under what conditions. The other (S 46) would establish a commission to explore the existing use of aversive therapy in Massachusetts.
 
Senate President Therese Murray has called the use of shock treatment, a form of so-called aversive therapy, “barbaric,” “criminal,” and “wrong,” making a rare appearance at a public hearing in 2007 to decry the practice.
 
The practice is employed exclusively at a school in Canton, the Judge Rotenberg Center, that has been at the center of a pitched battle over the use of aversive therapy.
 
Resistance to restrictions on aversive therapy by Rep. Jeff Sanchez (D-Boston), who brought his severely disabled nephew to the same hearing in defense of the practice, has helped thwart efforts to curtail its use.
 
Sen. Brian Joyce (D-Milton), sponsor of both proposals, said Sanchez’s nephew could continue to receive treatment under his proposal, but with more safeguards in place.
 
“These bills will only allow aversive therapy to be used to address behaviors that directly present a clear risk of injury or harm to self or others, only for short term intervals in accordance with accepted research citing the ineffectiveness of long-term aversive use,” Joyce said. Aversive therapy, he added, would only be considered when other “less intrusive treatments have failed.”
 
Joyce’s district contains the Judge Rotenberg Center, which he says is the only institution in the country that permits shock therapy for severely disabled students. The center recently drew the eye of the United Nations’s “special rapporteur on torture,” Manfred Nowak, who told ABC last month that he considers the shock therapy administered there “torture.”
 
“We’ve previously passed in the Senate a total ban on the use of this so-called aversive therapy, which is the deliberate distribution of physiological state of shock or discomfort on a completely innocent child. We’re the only state in the country that allows this practice, which has now been deemed torture by the United Nations,” Joyce said. “We in government have a fundamental responsibility to defend the defenseless. So far we’ve not done that with respect to these disabled children at the [Judge Rotenberg Center] in Canton. We have an opportunity to do so tomorrow.”
 
Rep. Sanchez told the News Service that sufficient safeguards already exist and that any further bureaucracy could be a “death sentence” for kids who have been helped by the treatment, including his nephew.
 
“Parents have to go through due process. This is not mandated upon parents. Parents request this because of how difficult their individual circumstances are. These are the most difficult children anyone will ever have to work with relative to their conditions,” he said.
 
Sanchez wondered why proponents of Joyce’s bill haven’t expressed “the same level of fervor and passion” about doctors who prescribe psychotropic drugs to kids.
 
“This is personal for me. It’s very difficult,” he said. “Aren’t parents the best advocates for their children?”
 
Asked if he would fight against the bill should it clear the Senate this week, Sanchez said, “Absolutely, with my heart and soul.”
 
Sens. Joyce and Patricia Jehlen (D-Somerville) both expressed bewilderment at Republicans’ decision to block action on the bills Monday. Ross objected to the consideration of two substitute versions of the bill, which backers said made little substantive change to the original proposals. But accepting the substitutes would have enabled the Senate to immediately consider the bills Tuesday, they said.
 
Parents of the approximately 200 children and adults who attend the school have defended it as the only way to prevent the severely disabled children from harming themselves – an alternative to mind-altering psychotropic drugs and daily physical restraints. Rep. Sanchez has said his nephew Brandon would not have survived without the availability of aversive therapy offered at the Rotenberg Center.
 
The Center’s founder, Matthew Israel, has said restrictions on the use of aversive therapy could render it ineffective. He described the electric shocks – administered through a backpack-like device called a GED – as a “two-second bee sting.” Some lawmakers who have agreed to submit to the shock described searing pain.
 
Last session, the bill died after being sent to study by the Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities, rankling the Senate president, who called it “disturbing that this kind of abusive treatment will be allowed to continue unchecked.”
 
Jehlen criticized Republican senators for positioning the bills for delay, telling the News Service after the Monday session that under the original plan, “we would’ve debated them tomorrow.”
 
She noted that the Senate has previously passed outright bans on shock therapy and called Joyce’s bills a “moderate, watered-down” proposal. Joyce said he’d also prefer an outright ban but said his current proposal is more likely to pass.
 
Joyce’s proposal establishes a category of behavioral therapy called “Level IV treatment intervention,” which includes “procedure which involves the systematic use of noxious or intrusive stimuli which are generally known to be painful or otherwise unpleasant to individuals.” Those include procedures that “cause physical pain to the individual, whether administered directly or through intermediate devices, such as skin electric shock, inhalants or ingestible substances but excluding alcoholism treatments … involve sleep or food deprivation,” and include “the introduction of additives to make food unpleasant.”
 
The bill charges the Department of Developmental Services with adopting regulations to govern the use of Level IV treatment. Under the Ways and Means redraft of the bill, the treatments shall be used to “address dangerous or self-destructive behaviors that directly present a clear risk of injury or harm to self or others.” The treatments “shall not be used for addressing a minor behavior problem, even if such behavior is identified as an antecedent to targeted challenging behavior.”
 
The treatments would be reviewed by a five-member “peer review committee” that includes two licensed psychologists. Facilities using aversive therapy techniques would also be required to establish a peer review committee.
 
Under the Ways and Means redraft of the second bill, a special commission would “investigate and make legislative recommendations relative to the adequacy and effectiveness of laws and regulations governing the use of behavior modification techniques.” The commission report would be due March 31, 2011.
 
Joyce’s original bills are each co-sponsored by seven colleagues. Reps. John Scibak (D-South Hadley), Thomas Sannicandro (D-Ashland), Matthew Patrick (D-Falmouth), Denise Provost (D-Somerville) and Ellen Story (D-Amherst), have signed onto both bills.