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THOSE WHO OPPOSE SCIENTOLOGY
THE BATTLE MOUNTS
Yet even while Mr. Hubbard successfully told man he could be happy and the numbers of Scientologists mounted, psychiatry was attempting to strengthen its grasp on society.
The plan involved what came to be known as the Siberia Bill, actually named the Alaska Mental Health Bill. The more popular title came from the fact that the proposed outcome of this cherished psychiatric plan was likened to a Siberia-type camp for mental health patients in the frozen wastelands of Alaska. Presumably, this was far enough away from the well-traveled roads of the world to allow psychiatrists to conduct their mind control and other experiments on a captive population, unhindered by the glare of publicity. To ensure a captive population, the measure incorporated a “simplified commitment procedure,” so simple, in fact, that it eradicated such wasteful and costly activities as jury trials and legal defenses and allowed any peace officer, friend, medical doctor and, of course, psychiatrist, to institute commitment proceedings.
But just after January 1956 and the bill’s unanimous, yet barely noticeable, passage through Congress, a coalition of members of the Church of Scientology and civil rights groups launched a campaign to inform the American public just what this bill held in store for them. Under the rallying cry, “Siberia, USA!” a massive letter-writing campaign inspired political opposition.
 
More statistical facts about Scientology
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