Children on Ritalin An experiment that's out of control by Jonathan Leo from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Op/Ed page, 12/3/00 As our society moves into the 21st century it has become apparent that the American medical community's unique legacy to the science of child development and child rearing is a potent psychotropic drug.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
It has become apparent that the mission of the American medical
community, is no longer health-seeking and Hippocratic, rather, totally
perverted, it has become entrepreneurialwholly dollar-, profit-seeking]
Ritalin is the drug of choice for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and every year more of our children are taking it. No other country comes close to ours in Ritalin consumption. In February of this year an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association documented that in one Midwestern community 1.4 percent of the preschoolers between the ages of 2 and 4 were prescribed Ritalin. "Shocked," "concerned" and "surprised" were just some of the responses by the American medical community.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
in that ADHD is not known to be a bona fide disease having a
demonstrable, diagnosable physical or chemical abnormality (abnormal =
disease; no abnormality = normal = no disease) in K-12 or adulthood, it
can most-assuredly not be called a diagnosable disease in infant,
toddlers and pre-schoolers. The appropriate term to describe this
drugging described by Zito, et al in the February, 2000, JAMA is
criminal. And now as if to further validate the cradle portion of
their indiscriminate cradle-to-grave iatrogenic drugging/intoxicating,
the NIMH has funded PATS (Preschool ADHD Treatment Study) which is to
conduct trials of Ritalin and amphetamine is 2-4 year olds with the
fictitious diseaseADHD]
However, it is insincere for anyone in the American medical community to be surprised at the current situation. In fact, while this statistic elicits concern in many of us it does not even meet the expectations of some of the Ritalin"experts" who still talk about ADHD being underdiagnosed.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
my yeslook at all of the unruly normal children, still un-medicated]
While ADHD might be one of the most intensively studied pediatric conditions, we still have no proof of any underlying neurobiological deficit. If the parent wants a prescription, the parent will get a prescription; it's as simple as that. If you want proof, read the August issue of The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Scientists found that in one community approximately 50 percent of the children who were receiving Ritalin did not meet the standard medical diagnostic criteria for ADHD.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Even the standard criteria, those of the DSM-IV, urged upon us most
recently by the American Academy of Pediatrics do not define a disease.
To allege that they do deceives the public and is a fraud. There is no
disease = abnormality to treat, there are only normal children.]
Scientists can argue all day about the cold hard data collected by statisticians but it also helps to put a name and a face to the numbers. For every child who I could hold up as an example documenting Ritalin abuse, the pro-Ritalin advocates would simply say that I have found an isolated anecdote that means nothing. So let's take the case study of a child who the Pro-Ritalin advocates feel should be medicated. It tells us volumes about why we have an epidemic of Ritalin use in this country. "Sarah, 14, chooses to sit in the back of the classroom and much of the time she's doodling in her notebook or staring out of the window. She seldom completes assignments and often forgets to bring the right books to class. Her desk is a mess and she generally can't find what she's looking for. Then she gets weepy and says that nobody understands her." Sarah's story is on the web site of the Department of Psychiatry at New York University.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
This is my alma mater. Last spring I got an invitation to alumni day,
and with it a program announcing that one of the presentations would be
by Harold Koplewicz, child psychiatrist and Director of the NYU Child
Study Center, on, of all things, ADHD. I promptly wrote to Dean
Glickman that ADHD is a fraud and such things did little to enhance the
image of what was once a truly great, scientific, healing institution.
That NYU now gives aid and comfort to those leading the charge to label
and drug normal infants and children in the name of psychiatry, is a
disgrace.]
According to the experts at NYU her diagnosis is ADHD, and the treatment of choice for her is Ritalin. This little girl is crying out, "Please understand me!" and the American medical community's response is,"Medicate her." Is Ritalin quick, easy and cheap? Yes. Will it work? Probably, if by work you mean make her easier to control. But the real question is, will it help her? You be the judge - but first put yourself in her shoes. A girl crying out for help who ends up with a prescription for a mood-altering drug says much more about how as adults we treat children then it says about "neurobiological deficits" in our children. The medication of Sarah and millions of other children is an experiment run amok.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
These are not experiments. An experiment is an act or operation
designed to discover, test or illustrate a truth, principal, or effect.
There is no such intent with any experiment carried out by biological
psychiatrists on children/persons said to have psychiatric
disorders/diseases. From the start, there is no evidence/proof that the
patients/subjects differ from the controls, i.e. that they have a
disease, that they are abnormal, that they are other than normal. As
such, no chance exists that a truth, principal, or effect will be
demonstrated. Nor is it intended that a truth, principal, or effect
will be demonstrated, and those authoring such researchsuch
experiments know it. All that is intended is that illusions of
neurology, biology, disease and treatment, be created, and that the
majority be deceived and continue to participate and continue to buy
chemical balancerspills, products of the senior and controlling
partners of the cartel, for their chemical imbalances. Physicians,
knowing very well that the difference between having a disease and not
having one is in demonstrating or not demonstrating a physical or
chemical abnormality, go along, nonetheless, simply because the pool of
potential new patients is inexhaustiblethey are not required to have an
abnormality; they are everywhere! This is the only way to begin to
understand the modern-day epidemic of psychiatric diseases and
drugging]
The National Institute of Mental Health is planning to spend $5 million to investigate the safety of these drugs in children as young as 3.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
This is the so-called PATS study, I mentioned above. It is criminal in
that none of the subjects have a legitimate, bona fide disease. Letters
should be sent to Congressmen Pete Hoekstra and Bob Schaffer of the
Committee on Education and the Workforce, who chaired the hearing
entitled "Behavioral Drugs in Schools: Questions and Concerns," held
September 29, 2000, 9:00 a.m., in Room 2175, Rayburn House Office
Building, Washington, DC, 20515-6100]
What responsible parent, doctor or government is going to volunteer a 3-year-old child for this experiment? Probably not the British; they are talking about banning these drugs for their children under 5 years old. If you think you have ADHD you can take a test at www.med.nyu.edu/Psych/public.html. The test has twelve questions which require a simple yes or no. Examples of the questions include, "Is it hard for you to get organized?" or "Do you have a hard time starting tasks or projects?" If you answer yes to a single question you are advised, "Based on the above answer you may be experiencing symptoms that may be a part of ADHD." As you scroll down the page you are told, "The test is designed to give a preliminary idea about the presence of ADHD symptoms that indicate the need for an evaluation be a psychiatrist." After all the money and time spent studying this so-called disease, is this the best the experts can do? A test that anyone living and working in the modern world would certainly fail. The real question here is, "Does this test sound like good marketing or good science?"
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The real question is, is such prescribing and drugging with drugs of
addiction, drugs that are dangerous and even deadly for a disease
that is such a thinly veiled fraud, not a crime?]
To be very blunt: The test is a silly gimmick which might be good for business, but it has nothing to do with science. The debate about the use of Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs for children urgently needs voices from other fields. The medical bio-ethicists, whose voices are often heard when the topic of genetically altered tomatoes is discussed, are somehow silent when the topic of normalizing children with psychotropic drugs is discussed. They are ignoring this debate at their own peril.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The medical ethicists, like the psychiatrists themselves and like all
within US medical academia are beholden to industrymostly of course to
the pharmaceutical industry. All physicians know that psychiatrys
representation that they diagnose and treat real bona fide diseases,
is fraudulentis the lynch-pin of the fraud. (see "The Kept University"
by E Press and J Washburn in The Atlantic Monthly, March, 2000.)]
American physicians prescribe 90 percent of the Ritalin produced worldwide, and the experts defend these prescriptions in the name of "science." Yet it is hard to take these same experts seriously when they give us a test like the one described above. For too long the American medical community has listened to a small group of "experts" who believe that upwards of 3 percent, 5 percent or even 10 percent of our children have broken brains.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Again, this claimpatently fraudulent, is their reason and
justification to treat. All claims that it is true are a perversion of
science and medicine. ]
If the American medical community wants to reverse this trend it needs to stop asking, "What is wrong with our children?" Instead it needs to look in the mirror and ask, "How have we come to believe that it is acceptable to medicate children so that they can make it through the school day?" The question is a matter of ethics and not science.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Correct, Dr. Leo. There is no science.]
- Jonathan Leo is associate professor of anatomy at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona.