I came across the letter to the editor of Britain's The Guardian. Quite worthwhile. HarHar. Brilliant. Send Eric a note and tell him so.
Monday January 6, 2003
· If a patient came into my office warning of an imminent attack on the United States with weapons of mass destruction without their being any evidence whatsoever that this would occur, and saying that we had to strike first and "take out" all those who were a threat to us as a first step towards world domination, I would diagnose him as suffering from paranoid and grandiose delusions and perhaps as psychotic. And, fearing that he constituted a potential danger to himself or others, I would commit him to a psychiatric hospital for a period of evaluation and treatment.
I suspect that some of my colleagues with licences to practise psychiatry in Washington DC are struggling with the decision to exercise their clinical, ethical, and legal responsibilities to protect the public now that the US Congress has failed to do so.
Dr Eric Chivian
(Co-founder, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) Harvard Medical School
eric_chivian@hms.harvard.edu