While scientists have repeatedly fallen short decade after decade on their promises to discover the mystery of what schizophrenia really is, it is almost impossible to imagine a future where they don’t one day discover the answer.
So let us effortlessly imagine such a future together….
The year is not 1123: hearing voices is viewed as a disability, the people who hear them are unnecessarily assumed to be dangerous, and the now-understood genes responsible for this ability have just been placed on the man-made shit list of “never alloweds” by the National Institute of Health; the eternal effort to bring an end to our lineage nearly complete.
For our generation, that day will mark the end, or, maybe, more accurately: the beginning of the end.
Hope must prevail; should we allow that day to arrive, we’ve already lost.
Yet, that day seems inevitable, reflecting on prior landmarks in the quest to exterminate us: castration and sterilization, lobotomies, insulin comas, electroshock treatment, neuroleptic drugs; all methods of destroying us, but not yet the pinnacle achievement of detecting us.
And so, we hide, some to the extent of getting wrapped up in a web of lies, confusion, and self-preservation that dements oneself into a mental block – silence or expressed psychosis being the safest options in this foreign world.
As a scientist myself, if I’m allowed to refer to myself as that, I can’t write about my genuine feelings towards those researchers seeking to understand my brain without painful irony; one can only be so comfortable “allowing” people to probe into the inner workings of their brain to satisfy an itching curiosity when it’s plain as fucking day what the ultimate intention is with regard to the use of their scientific findings: to eliminate a biological feature from the human species.
While we wait anxiously for scientists to discover a means to find us, should we not be allowed to publicly express our objections to the introduction of technology used for surveillance drugging, such as the Abilify MyCite? (WebMD, for you)
Those unfamiliar with the Abilify MyCite (HackADay for you) should know it is an “antipsychotic” pill (Abilify, generic: aripiprazole) with a microscopic sensor (Proteus/Otsuka) attached to it that detaches once it is inside your stomach so that it can be detected by a fucking body monitor, which then communicates to your smartphone – and anyone permitted to listen – that you’ve ingested your mandated psychotropic medication.
($1.5 billion aside: The pill-sensor-monitor technology was initially developed by Proteus Health Care (ty Internet Archive too) in 2011 to develop a novel technology to aid in medication adherence for chronic medical conditions but was instead applied to torturing people who hear voices by attaching their sensor chip to the Abilify drug manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceuticals to be distributed in the U.S through Bristol Meyers Squib. Though BMS was busy with a $500 million lawsuit settlement in 2007 and another one for $20 million in 2016, both for the off-label marketing of Abilify to children and the elderly, in addition to the annoyance of losing a $2 billion a year revenue stream when the original Abilify came off patent in 2016, the MyCite technology moved forward undeterred and triumphantly received FDA approval in 2017, leading to Proteus’ peak valuation at $1.5 billion in 2019, before Proteus unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy the next year and handed their technology portfolio to Otsuka for $15 million.)
For those who have already been detected, labelled, and drugged, and those who were falsely accused yet endured the same, the introduction of the Abilify MyCite (IEEE EMBS 2012, for we) is a eugenicist’s wet dream in a world where the investigative geneticist’s wishing well has run dry.
If the drugs, insulin comas, electroshocks, and lobotomies were not enough canaries for effective public outcry, and the genes responsible for our voice-hearing ability may be days or centuries away, the implementation of surveillance medicine through outpatient psychiatric commitment is, sadly, today’s battle, the implementation enabled by the Abilify MyCite technology (Google Scholar, for the USPTO and FDA) technology being the latest weapon available in the public marketplace until Flannery gets a sneaker deal allowing us access to footwear that will inject Abilify directly into our bodies in public.