A form of torture practised by the medical 'profession', and in many ways the most horrifying, is the infliction of suffering, in the form of 'treatment', against the will of the 'patient' (victim). This includes the compulsory 'medication' of those 'diagnosed' as 'mentally ill', who can in some cases be re-incarcerated for forcible 'treatment' if they fail to present themselves for regular torture when they are 'released into the community'.
Even when 'treatment' is not compulsory, doctors have no scruples about getting 'patients' (victims) hooked without warning on mind-altering drugs which will have severe side-effects if the 'patient' attempts to regain his independence of them. At least, their scruples only appear when it is a question of refusing to let the 'patient' have a form of medication which he wants to have. Doctors then become very sensitive indeed to every possibility, however remote, of any side-effect, and most unwilling to let the 'patient' decide for himself whether the risk of this possibility is one which, in view of his own motivation and knowledge of his own constitution, he wants to take.
Curiously and informatively enough, people appear blind to the horror of people being hooked for life by doctors on drugs which effectively deprive them of the use of their own minds — actually a more horrific deprivation of liberty than the infliction of physical pain against the will of a conscious 'patient' (victim), which would be regarded as torture if the doctor who inflicted it was not a properly trained and qualified person.
The hatred and persecutory fervour of modern society is reserved for those who wish to alter their mental outlook by the use of chemicals of their own choosing, and for those who sell them the chemicals they want to have. Self-inflicted drug dependence is regarded as an 'evil' from which victims (who are not 'patients') should be rescued against their will by the expenditure of massive amounts of taxpayers' money, while the drug dependence so freely created by doctors arouses no such opprobrium, although in many cases its continuity is enforced by compulsory medication. The voluntarily drug-dependent person is still free to decide to break away from the addiction, whereas the involuntary victim of compulsory medication is not. Nevertheless it is the former that is described as 'abuse' of drugs, whereas those who are compulsorily and permanently under prescribed influence, are described as 'users'.
(from the forthcoming book The Corpse and the Kingdom)