Vicious Child Abuse By Another Name!
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| The Ger Cult |
Hormone suppressants for yeshiva students with smartphones?
Recently, Amnon Levi, the host of Panim Amitiyot (True Faces), did a segment on a young man named Pini Landau, who recently left the Gerrer Hasidim. The segment was called “Castration among Hasidim” (sirus be-hasidut).
The story is as simple as it is problematic. Pini Landau was a
20-year-old Gerrer Hasid who lived in a yeshiva dormitory in Arad, in
which many things that the average western person — secular or religious
— finds normal are forbidden. One of these things is a smart phone.
According
to Pini’s explanation, the assumption is that if a young man has
internet access, it is guaranteed that he will use it to watch
pornography. Pini had previously been caught with a cellphone, so he was
considered a repeat offender. Thus, he was presented with a choice,
either to be kicked out of the yeshiva or take medication that would
make him stop behaving wickedly.
Pini was already taking a number of medications: Methylphenidate (for ADHD), Risperidone (an antipsychotic) and Sertraline
(an antidepressant), so the idea of taking medication wasn’t
particularly frightening to him, and he agreed. The medication that they
wanted him to take was Decapeptyl SR (triptorelin), which is a Gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist
(GnRH–A). What that means in simple English is that it is a hormone
suppressor. In women, it suppresses estrogen, in men, testosterone.
Hormone Suppressants
The drug has many medical uses for people with
different needs. It is used by women going through in vitro
fertilization to help control ovulation. It is used to treat prostate
cancer (prostate tumors feed on testosterone). It is used to block
puberty in children with precocious (=early) puberty and in children
with gender-dysphoria (to give them time to mature and think about what
they really want). Male-to-female transsexuals take the drug to suppress
masculine traits.
It is also given to sex offenders;
without testosterone, sexual desire in men plummets to virtually
non-existent, so in some states and countries, rapists or pedophiles are
offered reduced sentences in exchange for an agreement to take the
drug.
In addition to suppressing sexual desire in
men, it also brings about a number of body adjustments that give the man
female secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts. This is only
one of the many unfortunate side effects
of the drug, others include osteoporosis, severe weight gain especially
in the abdominal area (in medical terms, “increased visceral
adiposity”), impaired glucose tolerance, abnormal amounts of lipids in
the blood (dyslipidemia), and emotional disturbances. It is
counter-indicated for people with depression, and in general, anyone
taking the medication has to be seen regularly by a doctor to monitor
the side effects and make sure the patient is healthy and safe.
All of the above information is easily found
on the internet, to which Pini had no access once they took his smart
phone. It is also something that should have been explained to him by
his doctor.
A Doctor’s Role
The doctor to whom the yeshiva referred Pini is a psychiatrist in the Haredi community named Michael Bontzel,
an American immigrant who has been the physician of choice for the
Gerrer community for ten years. Before sitting in his office, Pini was
coached by the yeshiva’s powers that be about what to say.
He could not go into a doctor’s office and say
that he wanted to take hormone suppressant medication because he bought
a smart phone. What could the doctor write in his notes to defend such a
thing? So Pini needed to say something along the lines of, “I am
haunted by desires that are hurting my quality of life. I just want
these thoughts to go away.”
On the face of it, such a request sounds
“reasonable.” Perhaps the young man has obsessive tendencies that are
torturing him or desires that could lead him to put others in harm’s
way. But the doctor could also wonder about the more likely alternative,
that this could be a rehearsed and curated cover story that the boy was
being forced to recite to get the drugs his teachers and administrators
wanted him to take.
What the Doctor Should Have Said
The decision to give a 20-year-old boy a GnRH–A is serious,[1]
and the fact that this doctor was so familiar with the Ger community
means that he must know the kind of pressures that can be brought to
bear on such a boy to stop him from “sinning.”
In my view, he needed to have a candid and private conversation with Pini, and say the following:
Young man, it is,
of course, your right to ask for this medication but first we need to
clear the air. As this drug will entirely suppress your sexual drive and
has painful side effects, including the possible growth of breasts, the
loss of bone material, and extreme weight gain, we need to be sure that
this treatment is what you need.
The drug is
generally used on sex-offenders, people whose desires urge them to do
terrible things. Is this what you are going through? Because here is
what I am worried about: You are a single, ostensibly celibate
twenty-year-old man. Any normal man in your situation has sexual
fantasies. Many masturbate or have sexual partners, some even watch
pornography or visit prostitutes.
It may be that
these behaviors are religiously prohibited in our world, but they are
not abnormal, psychologically speaking. And it is very questionable for
me as a doctor to prescribe medication that isn’t medically indicated.
Do you want to
tell me a little more about what you are going through? Are you really
sure that suppressing your sex drive entirely and risking all those side
effects is really what you want?
Perhaps at that point, Pini would have told
him that he his yeshiva was forcing him to ask for the drug because he
bought a smart phone. Perhaps Pini would have withdrawn his request at
this point and said that this was too high a price to pay to stay in
yeshiva. But the doctor did not give this speech; he merely prescribed
the meds and Pini took them and suffered.
Willful Blindness and Legal Cover
The doctor seems to have been willfully blind
to the situation. When Pini confronted him in the segment and asked him
how he could have prescribed him those meds, the doctor’s response was
to repeat in a mantra-like form, “you were twenty years old and legally
responsible for your own actions.” Yes, this is likely true in a narrow
legal sense, but this sounds more like legal cover than a real response.
In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations,
the main character named Pip needs to speak to his lawyer Mr. Jaggers
about his (Jaggers’) client named Abel Magwitch, who had been exiled to
Australia but was now illegally back in England.
The moment Pip mentions to Jaggers that he spoke with Magwitch, Jaggers replies that he (Pip) must mean that he corresponded with Magwitch “of New South Wales” Australia, not that he spoke with him, since Magwitch isn’t in England (returning to England after exile being a death penalty offense).
Throughout the conversation, every time
Jaggers mentions Magwitch, he adds the phrase “of New South Wales.” He
is doing this because he knows full well that Magwitch is in England;
Jaggers is overcompensating to cover himself.
To me, Dr. Bontzel’s “you were a legal adult” sounds an awful lot like Magwitch’s “of New South Wales.”
Stopping Medical Abuse of Yeshiva Bachurs
Looking to the future, it is clear that we
have a problem in the world of Gerrer Hasidim and perhaps even in more
yeshivot. Young men are being medicated as a crutch to help these
authority figures control their behavior. According to the segment,
Pini’s case is just one example of a pervasive phenomenon that has
likely been foisted on hundreds of young men in Pini’s situation for
years, maybe even decades.
If it wasn’t obvious to doctors that the vast
majority of yeshiva bachurs asking for hormone suppressants are examples
of spurious use, forced on these boys by the undue persuasive power of
the authority figures in that world, it should be now. And thus, as a
society, it is incumbent upon us to stop this “medical abuse,” and
doctors need to be extra cautious about yeshiva bachurs showing up
asking for hormone suppressants.
No yeshiva should be allowed to pressure young
men to medicate themselves as a way of ensuring that these boys comply
with the community’s strict religious norms. This is abusive behavior
and should be identified as such in our statutes. Moreover, we need to
ask ourselves if doctors who are colluding with this behavior, whether
for ideological reasons or financial gain, should be allowed to continue
practicing medicine here.
[1] On one point, I have a serious quibble with Amnon Levi’s presentation. When he was interviewing Dr. Tzahi ben Tziyon,
the doctor explained how the drug works by suppressing testosterone.
Dr. Ben Tziyon explained that it was called “chemical castration” once
because both procedures shut down testosterone production. Never did he
imply that the effects are permanent, like castration. Yet, Amnon Levi
kept responding by saying that “so they are essentially castrating him.”
I feel that he was being willfully obtuse in order to use a
sensationalist term “castration” that brings up the horrible image of
permanent loss of libido, impotence, and even sterilization. As Pini
complains of loss of libido even eight months after taking the drug,
this could be a possible side effect.
Nevertheless, permanent or even
long term loss of libido is certainly not the medical function of the
drug or a normal effect of it. And yet, the title of the segment is
“Castration among Hasidim.” I worry that the Ger community and its
doctors will grab hold of this unfortunate description and call “witch
hunt.” It is never good to turn a horrible behavior into a monstrous
behavior for rhetorical reasons. It is distracting, and as the Rabbis
say “if you grab too much you get nothing” (תפשת מרובה לא תפשת).
Rabbi's Little Helper
Forget 'Big Brother': Psychiatric drugs are frequently administered within the Haredi community at leaders' requests, in order to bring members in line with norms, say sources.
This is not a reality show. It's a true story that's been going on for years. No one denies it, neither the psychiatrists nor their patients: Psychiatric drugs are being given to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, men, seminary girls and married women at the request of rabbis, yeshiva "supervisors" and marriage counselors. The furor that erupted recently after a psychiatrist prescribed pills to participants on the TV reality show "Big Brother" - apparently to help the production and not the patients - convinced some Haredi patients to come forward with prescriptions and documents attesting to a far broader practice.
Haaretz spoke to psychiatrists and others knowledgeable about psychiatric treatment in the Haredi community, and collected testimonies from half-a-dozen patients and their families.
About half of them are Haredi and the others have left the community. Each told a different story, mentioning the names of senior psychiatrists, rabbis and community functionaries.
Psychiatric drugs are rife in Israel's ultra-Orthodox community, sources say,
Psychiatric drugs are rife in Israel's ultra-Orthodox community, sources say.
READ IT ALL:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rabbi-s-little-helper-1.422985