Yesterday, ASAN and a coalition of disability rights organizations met with Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, head of the FDA’s Center for Radiological Health and Medical Devices. The meeting was productive, and we shared our community’s concerns regarding the use of electric shock torture at the Judge Rotenberg Center and discussed next steps with FDA staff.
ASAN staff, along with fellow disability rights advocates and medical experts, spoke with Director Shuren and other FDA staff about the long-term physical and emotional harm that these electric shock devices cause. We discussed the many available options for providing positive, non-aversive supports to people with the most significant support needs. We repeated our community’s demands: the FDA must act now to ban these devices and end this torture.
ASAN stands with over 290,000 of our community members and over 230 organizations against the use of aversive electric shock, and we will not stop until the torture has ended. Working with the FDA, with our partners in Congress, and with the disability community, we will continue to fight to ban these devices and #StopTheShock, once and for all.
Image Description: (Left to Right) Sam Crane, Julia Bascom, Nancy Weiss, and Nicole Jorwic stand behind 3 stacks of white boxes on dollies. The signs on the boxes say “290,000 Signatures calling on the FDA to #StopTheShock”.