Unacceptable delay

Slow FDA investigation endangered students

The Food and Drug Administration’s recent ban on the use of electric shock devices in schools seems like a textbook “better late than never” decision. But the ban raises an important question: What took so long?

The ban is national, but it is primarily targeted at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center in Canton, Mass., the one school in the country still using electric shock devices to “correct” the behavior of its students. The students at the center have mental disabilities or psychiatric problems that school officials believe can be treated only with extreme measures.

The school has defended the practice, arguing that the shocks amount to little more than a bee sting. But the United Nations did not agree. In a 2013 report, Juan E. Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, determined that the school’s electric shock therapy violated international torture conventions.

But it took exactly seven years since the publication of Mr. Mendez’s report for the FDA to put a stop to the practice. The FDA launched its own investigation into the use of electric shock devices in schools in 2014. At that time, an advisory board with the agency recommended banning the practice. Despite this, and the report from the U.N., it still took six more years for the ban to be implemented.

How many people were subjected to the electric shock devices during that time? How many students were abused and tortured?

This painfully slow process should motivate a congressional inquiry. Questions must be asked about why the use of electric shock devices was allowed to continue unabated in spite of the evidence, acknowledged nationally and internationally, that they were physically and psychologically dangerous? What could have been done differently — perhaps a temporary ban as a proper investigation was conducted — to protect the safety of students? Did lobbying efforts by the Judge Rotenberg Education Center — which has spent more than $431,000 on lobbying since 2010 — affect the efficacy of the FDA’s review?

Whether it was bureaucratic delay or something more sinister, there is no excuse when a government agency puts people in harm’s way, particularly some of the most vulnerable among us. Congress should launch an investigation and ensure that the FDA, and all other federal organizations, have more efficient processes in place to protect the welfare of American citizens.