
The Navy SEAL and His Doctor: An experimental brain treatment blows up two lives - tomohawk
http://rewired.inewsource.org/ucsd-kevin-murphy-prtms-navy-seals.html
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bjt2n3904
I've had a small 3rd party encounter with mental health services here in
Virginia.

I got about half way through the article, couldn't finish it. Honestly, what
this doctor is doing with TMS sounds just like what I saw the doctors do here.
Throw crap at the wall and see what sticks.

Talk with the patient for fifteen minutes, prescribe them a drug cocktail,
hold for a few days, say some mumbo jumbo about having a small spirit child
inside you. You have to see a judge before we release you. Nevermind, no you
don't. Time to go, boot them out the door.

And here's the HN crowd, getting all excited about the potential of micro
dosing LSD. I think my baking soda volcano from grade school was more
scientific.

I'm not saying there's no point in trying. I'm just saying I think we're over
confident in what we think we know. At some point, it starts to feel like
we're just making it up as we go along.

~~~
nradov
Yes that's basically right. We still don't know enough to reliably diagnose
the root cause of most mental health problems based on direct tests or
observations. So physicians have to prescribe treatments on a trial and error
basis using a mix of intuition and scientific evidence until they find
something that seems to work reasonably well for the patient. The long-term
effects of many drugs — both legal and illegal — are largely unknown and
sometimes impossible to reliably determine.

~~~
bjt2n3904
I'm not aware of any "scientific evidence" that physicians use with patients.
There's no way to measure depression objectively. An assertion that someone's
"brain chemistry" is off holds about as much water as their chi being
misaligned. It sounds sciencey, but if you can't measure it, you're making
things up.

~~~
nradov
There are standardized depression screening questionnaires such as PHQ-9.
Those are at least somewhat subjective, but they are widely used in large
scale double-blind studies of mental health treatments. If a large fraction of
subjects report a significant improvement in symptoms relative to the control
group then we can have some scientific confidence in the treatment.

[http://www.cqaimh.org/pdf/tool_phq9.pdf](http://www.cqaimh.org/pdf/tool_phq9.pdf)

Brain chemistry such as neurotransmitter levels is clearly a factor in some
mental health conditions. There is no serious dispute of this fact. But it's
also clearly not the only factor.

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TheHeretic12
Very good article to read. Not many places these days bother to cover a story
like that.

The behavior evinced by the researcher, Murphy, seems typical of the modern
technologist. Hubris, plain and simple. A better scientist would be just as
concerned with the failures and rejects as with the successes. His ready ties
to the military research centers are immediately troubling and suspect to me.
The kind of experimentation they have been known to support, (MK series),
makes me think this Murphy guy got an all but official blank check for his
work.

This TMS business is not quite half baked, not yet. They can talk about
brainwaves and frontal lobes all day, but the facts are: the human mind is far
too complicated to be fixed by a magnetic hammer, even when applied gently.
Surmont's description of the TMS as a "digital narcotic" is probably worth
more than any trial the FDA has ever done. Use of drugs and cannabis alongside
brute force brainwave manipulation is a recipe for disaster. The problem with
these treatments, is they completely fail to treat the real causes of mental
instability. Reading through Surmont's life story, he is a textbook subject
for mental experimentation. Unknown family history, Lack of a stable home,
sexual abuse, military trauma, TBI, on and on. Hes a walking DSM-V. If I
wanted someone I could use up and throw away, I couldnt find anyone better.

The real disgusting part about the whole affair is, that it is the same tired
failures Ive seen before, in real life with people I know. Here's a secret
that they will never admit to:

We have the technology to fix every case of "PTSD" that we get back from
overseas. (TMS is not it btw). Being able to make and break the human mind are
two sides of the same coin. The ability to thoroughly break and rebuild any
human mind has been a trade secret of our intel agencies for about 40 years
now. They are very good at it. All it would take, to solve PTSD, is to put the
people who run those black projects in a talent exchange with the VA. But they
will never give up thier secrets, and so men like Surmont are out there
walking around untreated, like aging sticks of dynamite, sweating nitro.

I could go on for hundreds of pages about the sordid history of American
military medical experimentation.

Im glad Surmont got a happy ending - somewhere in that San Diego daze, the man
upstairs decided to help him out.

~~~
austhrow743
>Being able to make and break the human mind are two sides of the same coin.

Do you have reason to believe that this is true specifically for the mind? I
can't think of any other scenario where you would need to be able to make
something in order to break it.

~~~
shkkmo
I would suspect the claim is using a specific understanding of "break".
Obviously you can break a human mind with a bullet or a chisel through the eye
socket, but there are certain types of breakage that are not possible without
much more nuanced understanding of how the mind functions.

In general, I think the idea is that when we learn to create a type of thing,
we also learn a great deal about new ways to destroy it.

~~~
mannykannot
But OP is claiming that some of the techniques used to break minds can be used
to cure PTSD. Some of us are skeptical, and OP gives no reason to think that
the 'two sides of the same coin' adage is applicable here.

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IC4RUS
I met Dr. Murphy through a mutual friend in 2018, and attended a presentation
that he gave about his prTMS treatment. I thought it was a bit odd that
someone who had a radiology / oncology background would be pushing TMS, and
was very disappointed by the rigor of his presentation. I wish I had the
slides to show, but it appeared to be something out of a pop science article,
and lacked much scientific background other than a sort of 'drugs are harsh
and non-specified, but I have a personalized treatment that works much
better.'

This set off the crank alarm for me, which got even louder when he made claims
about it being a sort of cure-all for psychiatric and even non-psychiatric
problems (depression, PTSD, anxiety, concussion recovery, and even cognitive
performance). Furthermore, he appeared to lack a technical or mathematical
understanding of the technology itself, using only vague analogies about
aligning the frequencies of different parts of the brain and whatnot. However,
I'm not the one with titles and prestigious academic positions, so my
complaints about his lack of evidence weren't taken too seriously.

I asked him direct questions, but he didn't answer much other than that his
brother, a chiropractor, had helped him write the software for prTMS and
designed the protocol (which I thought was very odd). Furthermore, he
described prTMS as TMS-like treatment that was based on EEG readings and
supposedly personalized, but given at a fraction of the intensity of usual TMS
treatment (which made me skeptical that it would work).

I'm surprised that he was able to attract so many big-name patients and
supporters - which included the Notre Dame University football team too. And,
given that his lofty claims about prTMS are completely unsupported by
research, I'm not surprised that it has reached the public eye.

Some of what was discussed in the article was news to me ($10 million in funds
he said was for him, claims about Newport's surveillance, etc) However, none
of it was surprising. He appears to have a history of disputes with his
partners and employees (including at other offices that offered prTMS not
mentioned in the article) and Notre Dame (he 'treated' their football team).
It's a bit ridiculous to hear him claim that people's lawsuits and complaints
are simply a result of jealousy and malicious behavior, considering his
history of deceit.

Edit: it appears that he's under investigation for the university funds he
took: [http://rewired.inewsource.org/UC-San-Diego-
Investigation-10-...](http://rewired.inewsource.org/UC-San-Diego-
Investigation-10-million-Kreutzkamp.html)

~~~
emmelaich
> _his brother, a chiropractor, had helped him write the software for prTMS
> and designed the protocol_

Well that is seriously not a good sign.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Indeed. Chiropractors are notoriously bad at QA

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kingkawn
Wildly damning and unprofessional that the doctor tries to discredit the
patient’s perspective because he has been psychotic.

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10xer
Reminds me of something supposedly hitting the market soon [0]. Randomly
hammering your brain with some electric current, and with no understanding of
the mechanisms, or without a model to test, seems complete pseudoscience. Be
sad if people use these and experience problems down the track.

[0] [https://thinkhumm.com/](https://thinkhumm.com/)

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anonymousiam
In the article, the behavior exhibited by Dr. Murphy seems similar to the
paranoia and delusions of grandeur that chronic cocaine users present.

~~~
shkkmo
I was wondering if there might have been some self-experimentation...

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chriselles
As a person familiar with both the experimental method as well as veteran
mental health issues, with this story I can’t help but think of the classic
image of Homer Simpson randomly punching buttons on his nuclear control panel.

This doesn’t read like any methodical and rigorous research for a credible and
effective treatment.

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sjg007
Fascinating. I mean we know that repetitive TMS can induce mania in unipolar
depression cases so it makes sense that Surmount could have a manic psychosis
induced by it. I think the trigger rate is higher for bipolar patients as
well. And while it's rare in general, Surmount had a lot of treatments which
probably raised the likelihood of a manic episode. I don't think we know the
combined effect of TMS and antidepressants for example and the likelihood they
trigger mania.

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smoyer
Ignoring Surmont for a moment ... Dr. Murphy sure sounds paranoid to me
(IANACP). Perhaps a few treatments with PrTMS would help that.

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aedron
Just another example of the army readily experimenting on soldiers with novel
'treatments'. Want to test some new unproven medical technology? The army will
hook you up. Thousands of hapless subjects who will do as they're told, no
questions asked.

~~~
coretx
They are not forcing or coercing anyone with that specific intent unlike many
commercial actors. In fact, when we compare for example DARPA's TCDS research
- it has beaten a lot of competetive initiatives in the private sector when it
comes to pushing high quality ethical neuro science and it's tech forward. I'm
not a military ethics fan and of the opinion it lacks all over the world but
the matter at hand surely ain't as gloomy black & white as you present.

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walrus01
I thought for a moment this article would be about a terrible misunderstanding
of the famous Navy Seals Copypasta

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xwdv
Can some summarize this story? Seems interesting but don’t have time to read
it all.

~~~
Akinato
"The Navy SEAL and His Doctor: An experimental brain treatment blows up two
lives"

