A surgeon, whose son had always been prone to violent feds. One of the things that comes out of lobotomies is a different idea about informed consent. He's following up with these patients and then as he gets older, you know, this this operation goes out of favorhe moves to California. But now his head hunting trips switch to just finding people taking cases to figuring out where they are. And so, there were people who went on to have like really quite high powered careers after a lobotomy.
When physician Walter Freeman died in 1972, he still believed that lobotomies were the best treatment for mental illness. A pioneer in the method, he was a deeply confident and charismatic man who eagerly spread the technique in America, long after the rise of alternative treatments that were less destructive. Listen as journalist Megan McArdle and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss what McArdle calls the "Oedipus Trap": mistakes that no one can live with, even if they were innocently made, and how admitting such mistakes to ourselves is nearly impossible. They also discuss the complexity of the credo, "follow the science."