Thread by @autisticats

What’s happening at the Judge Rotenberg Center is actually much worse than I knew.

The JRC is a facility in Massachusetts where autistic & disabled people are being given powerful electric shocks as punishment.

Those shocks are incredibly dangerous. More than you might think.

First, some background:

Milliamperes (or milliamps, abbreviated as mA) are a unit of measurement for electricity, which refers to the amount of electrical current passing through an object.

In this case, the amount of electrical current passing through a person’s body.

People can survive shocks at very high voltages as long as the milliamps and exposure time are low.

But the higher the milliamps and longer the time, the more dangerous a shock.

100 mA passing through the body for 2 seconds can be fatal, even at low voltages.

Here are the milliamps released by some common things you might think of.

Tasers: 2 to 4 mA
Stun guns: 2 to 4 mA
Cattle prods: less than 20 mA

The devices used at the JRC have a maximum amperage of 90 mA.

That’s only 10 mA less than the potentially lethal amount (100 mA)

Here’s the data on the GED devices, from the proposal to ban them (federalregister.gov/documents/2016…).

The current (amperage) of the GED ranges from 12 mA to 90 mA depending on the model and the setting chosen by the person controlling the device.

I decided to graph the data from the FDA’s chart about the GEDs, onto this chart (commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IEC_…) that shows the potential for death based on exposure to different amounts of current over time.

Points plotted: (12 mA, 2 s) (29.4 mA, 2 s) (42 mA, 2 s) and (90 mA, 2 s)

The red zone of the graph indicates irreversible effects, including possible ventricular fibrillation (irregular contractions of the heart, which can be fatal).

Shocks at this level also cause severe nerve and tissue damage, often leaving 3rd degree burns.

Yes, this is legal.

In many ways, dogs and livestock have more rights in this country than disabled people do.

No, this kind of torture should not be inflicted on any living being.

But what does it say about our society that disabled people are seen as less deserving of rights than animals are?

If you are disturbed by this, please take action.

@AutSciPerson has created this document with resources and information about ways to get involved: docs.google.com/document/d/13w…

Share about this issue on social media with the hashtag #StopTheShock.

Please fight alongside us.