On April 24, 2014, the The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government organization in the United States that decides what kinds of medical treatments can be used on people, held a hearing that led them to conclude that there is no way to use the GED without significant harm, and recommended a ban. Since then, they have drafted final regulations which would ban the use of electric shock devices as aversives. In December 2018, the FDA released their Unified Agenda, which said that they were working on finalizing the rule.