Howard Dully

Howard Dully (born November 30, 1948) is one of the youngest recipients of the trans orbital lobotomy, a procedure performed on him when he was 12 years old. Dully received international attention in 2005, following the broadcasting of his story on National Public Radio. Subsequently, in 2007, he published a critically well-received memoir, My Lobotomy, a story of the hardships of his lobotomy, co-authored by Charles Fleming. Isay broadcast Dully's search as a Sound Portraits documentary on NPR on November 16, 2005. According to USA Today, the documentary, which The New York Times describes as "celebrated", "created a firestorm "The broadcast, aired on All Things Considered, drew more listener response than any other program that had ever aired, and by May 2006, the Crown Publishing Group had negotiated worldwide rights to publish Dully's story in book form. In 2007, Dully published My Lobotomy, a memoir co-authored by Charles Fleming. The memoir relates Dully's experiences as a child, the impact of the procedure on his life, his efforts as an adult to discover why the medically-unnecessary procedure was performed on him and the effect of the radio broadcast on his life. The book was critically well-received. The New York Times described it as "harrowing", "one of the saddest stories you'll ever read.USA Today called it "at once horrifying and inspiring". The San Francisco Chronicle critiqued it as "a gruesome but compulsively readable tale, ultimately redemptive". In the United Kingdom, The Observer characterized the book as "a forceful account of his survival" that "sheds light on the man who subjected him to one of the most brutal surgical procedures in medical history".[ The Times described it as "uncomfortable reading", noting that " it is, given the circumstances, astonishingly free of rancor."