60 Minutes - 5/13/2018: 100,000 Women, Saving A Generation, Shock Therapy

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

100-thousand women have filed a lawsuit over a device -- similar to plastic -- that resulted in several post-surgery injuries. Scott Pelley reports. Bill Whitaker explains how the opioid epidemic is effecting the older generation. Plus -- is shock therapy REALLY as bad as it seems? Anderson Cooper finds out on this week's "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There is tremendous controversy about a surgical device implanted in more than 2 million American women. It's a strip of plastic called gynecological mesh. The manufacturers and several medical societies say the implant is safe, but more than 100,000 women are suing. I would say the material they're buying, maybe it's fine for making a park bench. Maybe it's fine for making a disposable cup. But that's a totally different situation when you're looking at something that will be in the body for 40 or 50 or 60 years. More than one million American children now live with their grandparents, primarily because of their parents' addiction to opioids and other

drugs. Grandparents are putting off retirement and plowing through savings to rescue their grandchildren from dangerous situations. We can't not do it. They're our grandkids. They're our family. Could you just tell us your full name and date of birth, please? Catherine Kitty Dukakis. In the past 20 years, Kitty Dukakis has undergone electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. I think we're good to go.

Dukakis was sedated, and electricity was administered to her brain for a few seconds. The seizure lasted about a minute. The only sign of it was some slight trembling in her feet. You're okay with the treatment we filmed being broadcast? Yeah, I am. I'm convinced that if I can be that public, that it will help others. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

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There is tremendous controversy about a surgical device implanted in more than 2 million American women. It's a strip of plastic called gynecological mesh. The manufacturers and several medical societies say the implant is safe, but more than 100,000 women are suing, and together they make up the largest multi-district litigation since asbestos. One of the largest manufacturers of gynecological mesh is Boston Scientific, a medical device maker with $9 billion in sales. Millions of patients benefit from its pacemakers, stents, and other devices. But Boston Scientific has attracted 48,000 lawsuits

which claim that its mesh can inflict life-altering pain and injury. Surgeons use Boston Scientific's gynecological mesh like a sling to relieve urinary incontinence and to lift organs that shift after pregnancy. Gwen Madsen had a Boston Scientific implant in 2012. It felt like a cheese grater inside of me. Like thousands of others who have filed suit, she says she suffered pain, which in her case left her hardly able to sit or play with her children. It felt like the material was pulling on the muscles and I'd get shooting pains. You almost felt like there was something inside of you that was like sandpaper back and forth every time you'd walk.

Boston Scientific has fought allegations like Gwen Madsen's for years. They declined an interview for our story, but the company told us nearly one million women have been successfully treated. We have extensively tested the plastic resin to confirm its composition, safety, and performance. The American Urogynecological Society has also said that plastic mesh is safe and effective. But that's not what many doctors are finding. The mesh causes a chronic inflammatory reaction. Dr. Michael Margolis is a surgeon who has removed 350 mesh implants.

He's been a witness in lawsuits against Boston Scientific. The slings I've removed are substantially altered in their architecture. They are shrunk by at least 50% in width. They are encased in scar tissue. The pores here, these openings here, are shrunk substantially. Dr. Margolis recently removed this type of Boston Scientific mesh. It had been implanted in his patient for life, but after two years it looked like this.

It was folded, it was contracted. It was embedded in scar tissue. It was choking off the urethra. It was 50 percent the size of its original implant. I measured it, as I always do. These are things that are not supposed to happen. Of course not. This implant is not supposed to change. The mesh is made of a plastic called polypropylene, a common material in packaging. Boston Scientific had clearance from the FDA to use a brand of polypropylene called Marlex, made in Texas by a subsidiary of Chevron Phillips. But in 2004, Chevron Phillips became concerned about medical use of Marlex. It issued a warning that it must not be used for permanent implantation in the human body. Duane Priddy is a leading plastics engineer and a fellow of the American Chemical Society.

I can, in my wildest imagination, imagine anybody that's knowledgeable in the science of plastics ever deciding that it was appropriate to use polypropylene in the human body. It's well known that it's oxidatively unstable. Dwayne Pretty has been a witness in mesh lawsuits, but he is not part of any litigation against Boston Scientific. He explained to us that oxygen breaks up polypropylene. The plastic has antioxidant additives, but they dissipate over time. Once those antioxidants are consumed, they're no longer there to do their job. Polypropylene will rapidly disintegrate and fall apart. In layman's terms, oxygen eats plastic. That's correct. In 2005, Chevron Phillips cut off Boston Scientific's supply of Marlex.

Later, when Boston Scientific appealed, Chevron Phillips replied, We are simply not interested in this business at any price. Boston Scientific estimated that it would run out of Marlex by 2012. George Viale, director of Global Supply Chain, wrote, this plastic resin supports a $120 million in annual revenue. I cannot overstate the importance of getting more. Boston Scientific had to have Chevron Phillips Marlex because that plastic was already accepted by the FDA. They looked everywhere. They looked at at least 20 different companies all around the world. They were looking for stocks of material. Chris DeArmit is a plastics engineer who researched Boston Scientific for one of the women suing the company.

They really struggled. There was a big panic on because they had a big stockpile. They ran out and they realized they were going to have to source more. That struggle is revealed in company documents that we found in court records. This report shows in 2010, a second supplier refused to sell polypropylene for use in medical device. Boston Scientific's global sourcing division decided to use a middleman with no direct link to Boston Scientific, so the plastic makers wouldn't know the true buyer. But that plan failed. They're looking for material, and they're desperate.

They can't find it locally, so they find it in China. And they literally say, we have to be careful here. Some of these look more credible than other ones. They're not convinced that it's real material. A broker in China called EMI said that it had tons of Marlex imported from Chevron Phillips in Texas. Boston Scientific's man in China wrote his superiors, Do we need to ask EMI if this material is supposed to be used in medical implantable? Boston Scientific's director of Materials Management replied,

please don't tell them where we will use it. It could scare them away. That same month, the FDA issued a damning report. Over five years, the FDA found that mesh supporting organs after pregnancy had resulted in nearly 4,000 reports of injury, death, and malfunction, and complications, including pain, infection, urinary problems, bleeding, and organ perforation. Serious adverse events, the FDA said, are not rare. Now, Boston Scientific had even more reason to believe that if it switched plastics, the FDA would require years of tests, which might fail. The company's best hope appeared to be the plastic in China. But then came the red flags.

Boston Scientific's own procedures required documents and import records that proved that the plastic was Marlex from Texas. But Chinese broker EMI didn't have any documents to verify authenticity. Boston Scientific checked the lot numbers on the bags and confirmed through Chevron Phillips three times that the numbers were fraudulent. Even the bags were fake. Chevron Phillips says the printing on the counterfeit bag on the right is full of errors, from the color to the name of the Texas city where Marlex was made. Evidence was mounting that the plastic in China was counterfeit, so Boston Scientific ordered tests to compare it with original Marlex.

They analyzed 11 different parameters, looking at the two plastics side by side, done in the same tests. Nine of those were different. Two were the same, nine were different. And of those nine that were different, four of those parameters were very different. And somehow from that, they concluded that it was the same material. How did they come to that conclusion? Well, I'm wondering that too. I mean, how can you look at two things side by side and say, yes, it's the same stuff? In an email from the address of Ann Cherist, manager for plastics in Boston Scientific's global sourcing division, there's speculation about the Chinese plastic's lack of documents. It may not have been imported through proper channels,

or it may have been redistributed enough times the original paperwork has been lost, forgotten. Facing a deadline, with those test results, no documents, and having learned the lot numbers were fake, Cheris concludes, I believe this is the right material. Boston Scientific bought enough of the Chinese plastic to last 30 years. We hired plastics engineer Duane Pretty as an independent consultant to analyze Boston Scientific's own tests of the Chinese plastic. We found the test results in court documents. I would predict a significant difference in the antioxidant stability, or I should say the oxidation resistance of those products in the

human body. The Chinese product is inferior. Absolutely, yes. Is the Chinese product something that you would imagine being placed inside the human body for 20, 30, 40 years? Absolutely not. How long would it likely last? A few months. I started to have problems right away. I told the doctor while I was in the hospital I couldn't feel my bladder. I couldn't feel when I had to go. Teresa Stevens had a Boston Scientific mesh implant in 2014 after the company began using the Chinese plastic. Sometimes when I went to the doctor I would have an infection.

Sometimes when I went I didn't. But I was having pain every time I would have an infection sometimes when I went I didn't so but I was having pain every time I would void so a lot of times I would have some blood so I knew something was wrong. In 2016 she had her mesh implant removed by Dr. Michael Margolis who told us the Chinese plastic's lack of documents is a concern. This is an experimental material. Implantation of this into anyone is human experimentation, but without consent, because this is novel material. We don't know how this affects humans. It's never been tested before.

I would say the material they're buying, maybe it's fine for making a park bench. Maybe it's fine for making a disposable cup. But that's a totally different situation when you're looking at something that will be in the body for 40 or 50 or 60 years. There's a whole different level of analysis and confidence that you need. And I don't see that here. The FDA requires Boston Scientific and companies like it to understand every step in the supply chain. In other words, who made the material, who packaged it, who shipped it, etc. How much did Boston Scientific understand about that supply chain? They don't seem to know where the material is coming from.

Nobody knows who the original manufacturer is. Nobody knows. And that's a big deal, right? You have to take a record of every lot. Was it contaminated? Has it been tested? And they don't know any of those answers. Boston Scientific also faced hurdles in getting the 16 tons of plastic out of China. The counterfeit bags were labeled Texas, but with no import records, Boston Scientific's man in China wrote, if we don't get rid of the original bags, if it is caught by customs, we will be in trouble.

A plan to hide the bags in plain wrappers was approved in an email sent from the address of Charles Smith, a director in Boston Scientific's Urology and Women's Health Division. We can overbag, the email reads. Pictures of the overbagging operation were then distributed to many company executives for their approval. On its declarations, Boston Scientific told the Chinese the plastic was made in China. It told U.S. Customs the plastic was made in the U.S. Because of lawsuits by Teresa Stevens, Gwen Madsen, and thousands of others, the FDA looked into Boston Scientific's experience with the Chinese plastic. The FDA declined an interview but wrote, we did not find any indication

that the change in plastic resin led to an increase in adverse events. We have confidence in our findings. The FDA recently reviewed these same test results, and they said that the Chinese mesh, quote, does not raise new safety or effectiveness concerns. What do you make of that? That's shocking. It's hard for me to imagine somebody looking at that data and generating an opinion that it is acceptable for use in the human body. Is your analysis something that any other expert in plastics would see immediately? Yes.

This is not a close call. No. As we said, Boston Scientific declined an interview, but it wrote, any allegations continuing to question the integrity or legitimacy of our plastic resin are false and irresponsible. We wondered whether Boston Scientific Mesh products still contained the Chinese polypropylene smuggled into the United States. So we purchased 15 Boston Scientific Mesh kits and sent them to a leading plastics lab.

All of them matched the Chinese plastic. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping, history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The growing opioid crisis has been declared a public health emergency. It sparked a parallel crisis you rarely hear about, the impact on children neglected by addicted parents. More than one million American children now live with grandparents, primarily because of their parents' addiction to opioids and other drugs, heroin, crack, meth, and alcohol. Grandparents are putting off retirement and plowing through savings to rescue their

grandchildren from dangerous situations. To see how widespread this is, we went to one of the healthiest states in the country, Utah. Tonight, we'll introduce you to a few families around Salt Lake City and meet children raised in the wreckage of the opioid crisis getting a chance at a normal life. Nine-year-old Cheyenne Nunn and her seven-year-old sister Lila have never been happier. Until recently, they lived with their mom and her boyfriend. The couple, addicted to heroin or meth or both, says the girl's grandmother, Cheryl Nunn. To see Cheyenne and Lila now secure in their grandmother's home outside Salt Lake City, it's hard to believe they once moved from home to home to homeless. You remember being homeless?

A little. Where would you go? Under trees. Like camping? Yeah. The times they did have a roof over their heads, they didn't have much else. Did you have enough food? Sometimes, but not always. I hid it under my bed. What would you hide? Top ramen, something easy to cook. How old were you? Five, six. How did you know to step up and take care of your little sister and cook?

I knew that she needed it. So I decided to be something I'm not. Which is? A grown-up. You decided to be a grown-up. You decided to be a grown-up? Yeah, I tried to be a grown-up for Lila. Because of her daughter's drug addictions, Cheryl told us she knew her granddaughters were in danger. To keep track of them and to prove in court her daughter was exposing them to drug dens and dealers, Cheryl gave her daughter a van with a hidden tracking device. It would record on Excel spreadsheets her going from meth house to meth

house to meth house. Cheryl said her granddaughters were in that van. She knew she had to save them from her own daughter. Well, the grandchildren are young and innocent. They are basically captives of a parent. Someone has to look out after them, and that person had to be me. After providing tracking records of her daughter's drug-filled nights, a judge named Cheryl, guardian of Cheyenne and Lila. Can you forgive your mom? Not till she gives it up. Do you think she's going to stop using the drugs? No.

Cheyenne and Lila haven't seen their mom in more than a year. Well, I'm not really happy about it, but I know that I have another mom right here. Down the road in Salt Lake City, Alexia Ansley told us she too had to step up to be a parent for her younger brother and sisters as their mother spiraled down into drug and alcohol addictions. She was never there. And if we wanted to get food, we had to get it ourselves. I think she forgot she had kids some of the time. So you took care of them? I would change their diapers. I would feed them, feed them baby food. When you first started stepping in to be the mom. How old were you? Younger than 10. When their mother was around, Alexia said she'd take the kids on excursions to pilfer in the neighborhood. If we saw somebody

with this big giant snow globe and snowman, we'd go over there, unplug it, deflate it, put it in the wagon. We would take things. Would you actually go up on people's porches? If they had something on their porch, yeah. Your mom would go sell these things? Yeah, she'd sell them, and then she'd go buy drugs. And if she had any money left, she would buy us candy for helping her, or she'd steal us candy. And we're kids. Candy's everything. When Alexia filled in as mom, she managed to give her younger siblings candy thanks to a sympathetic shopkeeper. Sometimes I would gather up

some couch change. And when I tried buying them a candy, and the guy at the register would let us take the candy if I didn't have enough change. He knew. I heard about couch hopping. What was that? So we were homeless at a point in time.

We would go to my mom's friend's house, just some of her random friends, and we would sleep on their couch for a couple of days. And then once they kicked us out, we'd go to another couch. We mostly stayed at crack houses and just slept on their couches. Couch hopping ended five years ago when the children were legally taken in by their mom's mother, Beth. Alexia is now 16. Brayden is 13. Mackenzie, and Ember 8 all pitch in at grandmom's house. It's now home. What's better about living with grandmom than living with your mother? We get regular food and we get like nice clothing. We have stuffed animals. We don't have a bathroom filled with dirty clothes

up like a mountain. And we always know that we're going to have a decent meal that'll fill us up so we're not sleeping hungry. Mackenzie, I heard that you would sleep on the stairs. Yeah, because so my mom, she would, leave in the middle of the night and go who knows where, and then not come back for, sometimes it would be a couple days. I thought that maybe if I slept on the stairs, she would be scared to step on me, and so she wouldn't leave. Did that work? Sometimes. Sometimes she would skip that step and she would still go out. Some nights, their grandmother Beth would secretly park down the street

from where her daughter and grandchildren were staying at the time to keep watch all night. It always made me feel safer that she was out there because we knew that if anything were to happen we could like get ahold of her really quickly she's like your guardian angel yeah being a guardian angel has taken a toll Beth told us she has wiped out her savings Alexia got a job to help with the bills and sometimes I can't pay my electric bill and I'll have to wait and I go to the food bank a lot. You know, if I buy them things that are used, I wash them and put them in a box and give them to them.

And they've never, they don't complain. What has your grandmother had to sacrifice to take care of you guys? Dating. She says it all the time. All the time. I haven't dated in years. She's had to sacrifice almost everything. She had to change the whole way that she lived because our mom decided to do drugs. In Salt Lake City, home of the Mormon Church, finding a beer used to be a challenge. Now, drug use is out in the open. Stoked by the opioid crisis, 21,000 children just in Utah live with their grandparents.

Everyone tell me your name. Bacall Hinks runs a non-profit organization called Grand Families that helps grandparents and grandchildren adjust to new family arrangements. There's a growing demand for its services because of the opioid crisis. Unfortunately, opioids is a very hard addiction to overcome. So the likelihood of these parents actually overcoming their addictions and coming home and being able to parent is very low. Hinks introduced us to the families we interviewed. She told us, like Alexia and Cheyenne, young children of addicts often assume the role of parent.

I'm what we call parentified. Parentified. Yeah. How do you deal with that? I do my best to help them feel like a child again. And Grandma and Grandpa are there to take care of them now, and they don't need to worry about the safety of their siblings because that's someone else's job.

That's the adult's job. I like myself because I'm me. Grandfamilies has separate groups for young children, older children, and grandparents, and brings the generations together for holiday parties. Bacall Hinks said it's important for them to see many others are in the same boat. They're able to connect with others who are in similar situations and have friends and don't feel so isolated and alone anymore.

We found people that went through the same type of thing and it was really helpful to actually express what was happening to us and they could relate to what was happening. Ellie Kligman, her brothers and grandparents were all aided by grandfamilies. The kids moved in with their mom's parents after their family fell apart. First, their dad abandoned them. Then, they say, their mom descended into opioid addiction, and they ended up homeless. One day, the school bus left them at a stop at this gas station. Their mother never came to pick them up. Eliana called and said, Grammy, we're sitting here waiting, and, you know, my mom hasn't come.

Cindy sent their grandfather, Michael, to bring the kids home. They both thought they'd only have them a few days. And then a few days turned into a few weeks, and a few weeks turned into months, and here we are. How many years now? Two and a half, almost three. Go on, three. Had you been planning for retirement? Yes, we were going to do tiny house, simplify life, and then travel.

As it worked out, it didn't work out that way. We became parents instead of grandparents. The kids said with their mother often sleeping or out of the house, they could do whatever they wanted. But their grandparents insist on rules. It sucks having rules and chores, but it has to happen for us to actually grow up and be a responsible adult and take charge of our lives. Michael, you are fighting cancer.

That's true. I have a terminal cancer. So has this been especially tough on you? Yeah. I have good days and bad days. I worry that I'll miss something in his care and I have. You do wonderful. They say being parents again has strained his health their marriage their bank account so what has this done to your savings yeah i work um full-time and then two part-time jobs their daughter they told us has been in rehab this isn't the retirement they had expected, but... But we can't not do it. They're our grandkids. They're our family. You've probably heard the term shock treatment used to describe

electroconvulsive therapy or ECT. Psychiatrists don't like the term because of the stigma surrounding it, which they say prevents the vast majority of severely depressed patients from ever trying it. What might surprise you to learn is that despite its misuse in the past, ECT is now considered one of the most effective treatments for people who haven't been helped by antidepressant medication. In the U.S. alone, that's more than 5 million Americans suffering from depression so crippling it leads many people to take their own lives. One of my patients explained it to me, saying that it's not that I want to die. It's that living is too painful.

Dr. Sarah Lisenby works at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland, developing new ways to help the more than 35 percent of depressed patients who don't get better with medication. Imagine feeling severely depressed and then you try medication after medication and those treatments, even though you're doing everything the doctor told you, the treatments are failing you. How long had they been trying to get some sort of medication that works? It's not uncommon for someone to have tried 20 or 30 different medications by the time that they come to see me. So if you're trying 30 medications, that's taken years of your life. Exactly. And imagine how that would magnify your hopelessness.

We first met Dr. Lisenby in 2001 when Bob Simon watched her and her team administer electroconvulsive therapy, ECT, long considered a treatment of last resort. ECT works by inducing a one-minute seizure, which the patient doesn't feel because he's been given muscle relaxants and general anesthesia. Yeah, he sees me. Why is the seizure aspect of it so important? Because of all the words, seizure would be the word I would try to avoid the most.

So when the brain is seizing during a seizure, it releases all of the neurotransmitters, the brain chemicals that are the messengers in the brain. And it releases them very rapidly and massively in a higher level than medications do. The treatment may work wonders, but only a tiny fraction, about 1% of the people who might benefit from it, end up trying it. It's still frightening for people. It's not something that you have to be afraid of. And so many of my patients, after they've had ECT, say to me, why did I wait so long to do this?

Or why did my doctor wait so long to refer me for this? That was the reaction of former First Lady of Massachusetts Kitty Dukakis. She's now 81 and has become one of the most famous and outspoken advocates for ECT. She first had the treatment almost 20 years ago. The next president, Michael Dukakis. Shortly after her husband, Governor Michael Dukakis, ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988, Kitty Dukakis' struggles with alcohol spiraled out of control. Dukakis said his wife voluntarily entered the Edge Hill Newport treatment facility in Rhode Island last night.

She's going to be a good patient. She understands herself. I'm married to a very courageous person. She was treated for alcoholism, but her drinking masked an underlying chronic depression. I didn't see any way out of this problem that I had. And had you tried all different kinds of medication? Every kind you can think of, yes. And none of them worked. None of them were successful. How long was it that you were trying different medications before ECT? 17 years. Wow. Yeah, it was a long, long time. One would think that somehow, sometime earlier than 17 years,

somebody would have said, hey, go see Dr. Welch. Dr. Charlie Welch administers ECT here at McLean Psychiatric Hospital outside Boston. He was the person Kitty Dukakis came to see about getting it. What did you say to her when she first came? I said, I'm glad you've decided to do this. I think we can get you feeling better fairly quickly. Her doctor previously had told her, who was treating her, had told her, don't go for ECT. Correct.

Back then, ECT was among the most vilified treatments in psychiatry because of the way it used to be administered. Portrayed disturbingly in the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here we go. Clearly, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest gave ECT a bad name because that's not how it actually is done. It was done that way in the past. In the past it was, but it's much more refined.

No anesthesia, too much electricity. Right. So what's different about it now? What's different, first of all, is that it's done under general anesthesia with a muscle relaxant. So when the treatment is done, the patient is sound asleep and completely relaxed. If you're having it done, you don't even know it's happening. That's correct. For the patient, the experience is like taking a five-minute nap. The seizure seems to restore the brain's proper circuitry. In Kitty Dukakis' case, the results were immediate. I just was like a new person.

It was our anniversary, remember? Yeah, right. It was your anniversary? Yeah. Do you remember the day? Remember what happened? I picked you up at the hospital. Then what happened? We got in the car, and Michael started driving, and I said, I think I want to go out for dinner for our anniversary.

You said, let's go out for dinner. Let's go out, okay. If somebody hadn't suggested ECT to you, what do you think would have happened? I can't imagine. I mean, I think it would have gotten worse and worse and worse. I don't think Kitty would be here today. For most depressed patients, ECT involves about 8 to 12 treatments over several weeks. In the past 20 years, Kitty Dukakis has undergone ECT more than a hundred times. If ECT works so well for Kitty Dukakis, why does she need to have repeated treatments? The nature of depression is that it is usually a relapsing illness. That's common. That is very

common. Last spring, Dukakis decided to stop getting ECT. When we first met with her in July, she hadn't had her regular treatments for months. Her depression had returned and she had difficulty answering our questions. Every doctor I've talked to credits you and your willingness to talk openly about this. You can explain this better than I can. I'm having trouble speaking right now. Can you tell us your full name and date of birth, please? Excuse me? Could you just tell us your full name and date of birth, please?

Catherine Kitty Dukakis. Realizing she needed help, she resumed getting ECT and allowed us to film it. The whole visit lasted about an hour. Dukakis was sedated and electricity was administered to her brain for a few seconds. The seizure lasted about a minute. The only sign of it was some slight trembling in her feet. When we met her again two months later, we could see the difference. The last time we saw you, you weren't feeling well. How are you feeling now? I'm fine. I feel very well. And I've been having treatment again. You're okay with the treatment we filmed being broadcast? Yeah, I am. I'm convinced that if I

can be that public, that it will help others. And I think we both feel that way. Is this something you see doing for the rest of your life? I probably will have to do this for the rest of my life, and that's okay. It's just a routine? It's the way it goes. But as Kitty Dukakis has experienced to a small degree, ECT carries a disturbing side effect, memory loss. ECT can cause memory loss.

It's been modernized to reduce the amount of memory loss, but it's not zero. What sort of memory loss do people have? And is it permanent? Typically, memory is close in time to the treatment. Over time, those memories can return, but the problem is they don't always return completely. That's what motivates my research. I feel like people shouldn't have to choose between their memories and their moods. Dr. Sarah Lisenby has spent decades trying to solve that problem. She's developed an experimental treatment called magnetic seizure therapy, or MST,

that uses magnets instead of electricity to induce the seizure. With ECT, the electricity floods the whole brain, including its memory centers. Magnets are gentler and can pass through tissue more easily, so they can target just 4% of the brain in the prefrontal cortex, one of the main areas affected by depression. So this is the magnetic coil. Dr. Lisenby showed us how the magnetic coil can pinpoint a specific area of the brain. So what is on the monitor? Okay, so on the monitor, we're looking at a brain scan showing us in real time,

as we move the coil around on your head, it's showing us where on the brain surface we're targeting. So this allows it to be more precise in terms of where you're stimulating the brain as opposed to ECT, which would of where you're stimulating the brain as opposed to ECT, which would have a larger area of the brain. That's right. We can focus the magnetic field more precisely than we can with ECT. For example, we can even find just the right spot in your brain to make your thumb twitch, but not the rest of your arm. Okay. So shall we try it? Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and put the coil on your head, and you're going to hear a clicking noise and feel a tapping on your head. Are you ready?

Mm-hmm. I'm going to go ahead and start. And your hand moved. I'm going to move the coil around a little bit. I'm going to go again. See, I've got your index finger there. Go. It was 18 years ago that Dr. Lisenby first tried the magnetic treatment on a patient in Switzerland.

Do we have a seizure? Yes, we have. I mean, it all happens very fast. It's not a lengthy treatment. Yeah, you can see she's already waking up. Smiling. Yeah, she's smiling. I mean, she's not in pain.

And she started to feel better almost right away. And the important thing is she did not have serious side effects. Since then, Lisenby and others have conducted trials that show the magnetic therapy seems to work in treating depression without causing noticeable memory loss. One study in 2015 that compared ECT and the magnetic treatment found that ECT-induced acute memory disruption is absent after MST, Dr. Lisenby's magnetic therapy. Would it replace ECT?

I would view magnetic seizure therapy, if successful, as an additional tool in the toolbox. For some people, ECT may still be needed. But if magnetic seizure therapy could be effective without the memory loss, who wouldn't want to try that first? Starting this year, here at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, and also in Dallas, Texas, doctors are comparing the two treatments in the first large coordinated trial by the National Institute of Mental Health. It'll span five years and involve more than 250 patients. Good morning.

Sharon Jacob is one of the patients receiving the magnetic treatment. I had severe psychosis. I wanted to kill myself with a gun. Did you have a gun in the house? There was a gun in the house, yes. And you had cartridges for it? I had cartridges, yes. Once a thriving ophthalmologist, Sharon Jacob lost her career after developing chronic depression that didn't respond to medication. It became so severe, she had to suicide-proof her house, getting rid of all sharp objects, including her ice skates. Still, she wouldn't get ECT.

I didn't want to have ECT because of the stigma and because of the risk of memory loss. So you decided not to do it? That's right. And then my psychiatrist said, how would I like to be part of a study for MST, magnetic seizure therapy? She let us film her procedure. After several treatments, which she augmented with medication, she began to feel better.

After the fourth treatment, they said, I feel much lighter. Lighter, that was the... Lighter was the feeling. Your face lights up when you talk about it. Yes. Yes, I'm very blessed. Have you had memory loss? No, I haven't. So no short-term or long-term memory loss?

None at all. Do you feel like yourself? Right now, I haven't. So no short-term or long-term memory loss? Not at all. Do you feel like yourself? Right now, I feel very, very good. I feel like my old self. There is a way out of it. There is light at the end of the tunnel. There is, yes. And you're proof of that? I am. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.