March 27, 2001

To the Editor:

Re "Contortions of Psychiatry in China" (editorial, March 25):

During the last year, the American Psychiatric Association has made multiple inquiries to the leadership of the World Psychiatric Association about psychiatric abuse of political prisoners in China.

The World Psychiatric Association Committee on the Use and Abuse of Psychiatry has moved too slowly in the face of serious accusations about psychiatric imprisonment of Falun Gong members, union and student leaders, and others who are diagnosed as "political maniacs" and subjected to shock therapy and psychotropic medications.

The World Psychiatric Association must move with alacrity as it did at American, British and Australian insistence when psychiatry was used in the intimidation and torture of Soviet dissidents.

DANIEL B. BORENSTEIN, M.D.

President, American Psychiatric Association

Los Angeles, March 25, 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/opinion/L27CHIN.html?searchpv=nytToday