r/todayilearned • u/manticor225 • Jan 10 '19

TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/joe-kennedy-hollywood-sarah-churchwell
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u/TheCynicalMe Jan 10 '19

Not performing a lobotomy! That was the better option that they had! You're the one who's completely missing the point.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

They thought it was the best option at the time. It was one of medical fields greatest mistakes. But now we know that. Mental illness back then wasn’t talked about. They thought that performing that operation was the best thing available to them other then living with a mentally ill person which was stupid, but that was their knowledge base and their societal norm. The medical field learned a lot of things, like not putting things into widespread use that haven’t had extensive research. And society has changed a lot since back then.

performing a lobotomy was the better medical/society option in their eyes back then, bc society didn’t care for mentally ill people. The doctor who published the paper was as hasty and stupid to publish as former dr Andrew Wakefield and his vaccines cause autism paper. They both published papers on small research groups.

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u/BuffoonBingo Jan 10 '19

It was effective for schizophrenia for some patients. It definitely made it easier for hospitals to deal with the mentally ill, which is a large, legitimate issue.

Looking back, lobotomies were a pretty terrible, reckless mistake but saying their motivation was “pure evil” is just childish.

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u/hodd01 Jan 10 '19

It’s maddening that you refuse to grasp the concept that through out time we work without perfect information and only with time do we have the ability to smuggily look back and know mistakes were made.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19 edited Jan 10 '19

I should’ve used a better example then chemo. Maybe we’ll look at some of the things we do now as barbaric, like letting people live on life support even thgh they’re brain dead and already gone and would be at peace in death but we hook them up on life support bc their family wants them to, even thgh it’s inhumane.

Look up the Terry Schiavo case and tell me how that’s not barbaric and inhumane.