Congressional subcommittee moves to allow Canton school to continue shocking disabled students
The only school in the country that uses painful electric shocks on its disabled students may have found a way around a proposed ban on the devices that administer the shocks.
In the face of a proposed Food and Drug Administration ban on the device that delivers the shocks, a U.S. House subcommittee added language to a budget bill that would make an exception to the ban if the use of the devices is authorized by a court.
The devices are used in just one place in the country: the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, and their use is always approved by a probate judge.
Nancy Weiss, an advisor to the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities who has opposed the use of the device for years, said she's frustrated but not surprised by the behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
"By putting this language in, they're exposing people with disabilities to incredibly painful fall on the floor, screaming in agony shocks," she said in an interview.
The language was approved along party lines at a meeting earlier this month of a Congressional subcommittee approving the budget for the FDA, with Republicans supporting the JRC loophole.
The Republican chairperson, Andy Harris of Maryland, told 5 Investigates in a statement that "In certain cases, this device has been found to be the only treatment to effectively prevent self-harm — and to use or not to use the treatment should be a decision made between the patient’s family, their doctor, and the judge reviewing their individual case, rather than a blanket decision by a bureaucrat at the FDA who has never seen the patient.”
Some Democrats opposed it, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.
"The majority continues to load up appropriations bills with harmful policy riders. One rider is particularly barbaric. A provision in this bill would prevent the FDA from stopping the use of an inhumane electrical shock device," she said at the subcommittee hearing.
The FDA first tried but failed to ban the devices in 2020. Earlier this year, the FDA announced it was trying to ban them again.
"How did that language get in there?" 5 Investigates Mike Beaudet asked.
"We don't know for sure. I suspect the Judge Rotenberg Center's lobbyists encouraged the language to be put in," Weiss replied.
In a statement, the Judge Rotenberg Center applauded the move, saying, "The language introduced by Congress would address a provision in a bill from two years ago that allowed the FDA to interfere with the practice of medicine by banning medical devices for specific uses, including those used in the life-saving treatments at JRC."
Weiss said the advocates are not giving up, stepping up their own lobbying to try and get the loophole language removed when it goes to the full committee next month. The Senate hasn't taken up the FDA's budget yet, either.