On deciding to have a lobotomy: either lobotomies were justified or decisions under risk should not always seek to maximise expected utility

Abstract

In the 1940s and 1950s thousands of lobotomies were performed on people with mental disorders. These operations were known to be dangerous, but thought to offer great hope. Nowadays, the lobotomies of the 1940s and 1950s are widely condemned. The consensus is that the practitioners who employed them were, at best, misguided enthusiasts, or, at worst, evil. In this paper I employ standard decision theory to understand and assess shifts in the evaluation of lobotomy. Textbooks of medical decision making generally recommend that decisions under risk are made so as to maximise expected utility (MEU) I show that using this procedure suggests that the 1940s and 1950s practice of psychosurgery was justifiable. In making sense of this finding we have a choice: Either we can accept that psychosurgery was justified, in which case condemnation of the lobotomists is misplaced. Or, we can conclude that the use of formal decision procedures, such as MEU, is problematic.

In search of a "criminal person": Changing scientific views on the role of biological determinants in the etiology of crime

“…Лидером в производстве подобных операций были США, в которых к середине ХХ века было произведено (по поводу и без повода) несколько десятков тысяч лоботомий. Вскоре стало ясно, что следствием лоботомии является превращение человека в безвольное, несамостоятельное существо со сниженным интеллектом, нарушенной координацией, недержанием мочи и другими тяжелыми последствиями (среди которых смертельный исход составляет около 5%) [31]. В настоящее время описанный метод избавления общества от преступников запрещен во всех странах мира.…”