CONSENSUS CONFERENCE TO CONSENSUS STATEMENT WITH NEVER A SHRED OF PROOF - By Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Neurology/Child Neurology (2/8/2002)

CONSENSUS CONFERENCE TO CONSENSUS STATEMENT WITH NEVER A
SHRED OF PROOF

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By Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Neurology/Child Neurology

February 8, 2002

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Attention Deficit Disorder—ADD, was contrived, in-committee
at the American Psychiatric Association—APA, in 1980.  Would “ADD” resonate in the marketplace?  Surely “minimal brain damage” and—finding no
damage–minimal brain dysfunction”—MBD didn’t. 
The epidemic stood fast at 250,000 or so.  They weren’t moving the Ritalin as they hoped.  And ADD wasn’t much better; the
“epidemic-without a disease” stood at 500,000, a half million, or so, when the
same committee went for “attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder”—ADHD–in
1987.  Now they were getting somewhere;
by 1990 with the new acronym and an ever-more-inclusive behavioral check list,
the “epidemic swelled to a million by 1990, and with a bit of “tweaking” of the
ADHD model for their 1994, DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual)-IV volume,
to 6 million—13% of US school children, by the year 2000.  What an invention!

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But all the way to the bank, the ADHD “experts” and
“researchers” are troubled; troubled by the nay-sayers, skeptics, doubters, and
troubled, most of all by those who harp: “where is the abnormality?”  There is no more brain abnormality in ADHD
than their was brain damage in “Minimal Brain Damage.”  “Where is the proof that the millions of
kids being drugged are other than normal at diagnosis?  We know they are abnormal, poisoned,
intoxicated, the moment such drugs circulate through their brains and bodies.  Where is the proof  just like the Cali and Medellin and Tijuana cartels, this is
other than drugging of the sort the vaunted US “War on Drugs, ought to be
addressing? 

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Lets jump to 1998. 
By then, 4-5 million had been “diagnosed” and were being “treated,” most
of them with Ritalin and other Schedule II, addictive, dangerous, sometime
deadly, psych-stimulants. 

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On April 15, 1998,
I  [1] wrote Attorney General Reno:

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“The  biggest health care fraud in US history is
the representation of ADHD to be a disease, and the drugging of millions of
normal children …”

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In CHADD’S Spring, 1998, Attention magazine  announcement of the upcoming, Consensus
Conference,  Jensen [?], a member of
CHADD’s professional advisory board stated: 

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 …AD/HD has
been surrounded by long-standing controversy. 
This controversy, surrounds the actual diagnosis of AD/HD—that is,
whether the diagnosis simply ‘pathologizes’ normal child behavior and whether
it is a function of large classes, to busy parents, or the machinations of a medical/pharmaceutical
cabal.  

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In a rebuttal to CHADD and the supposedly independent,
objective Dr. Jensen—a rebuttal never published or acknowledged, I wrote:

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No, Dr. Jensen, a consensus
conference will not suffice, and is not necessary.   A forthright confession that AD/HD is not a disease, i.e., that
the children are normal, is what is called for and, is long overdue.  Unless there is a frank and public statement
that ADHD is not known to be a disease, a syndrome (medically speaking) or
anything biologic or abnormal within the child, legitimate research and
practice–none of it biologic, cannot begin, and the consensus conference, as
planned, will only be another element of the fraud.

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And now they give us yet another Consensus Statement—this
when consensus, votes, and shows of hands, has absolutely nothing to do with
the process of validating true diseases, or extending knowledge of them.  As I have said, countless times, a disease
is an abnormality (abnormality = disease; no abnormality = normal = no
disease).  Until a physical or chemical
abnormality has been demonstrated in a given patient, he or she cannot be said
to have a disease. 

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Further, the majority of the signatories to the January,
2002 Consensus Statement on ADHD are psychologists, the remainder are
psychiatrists.  Psychologists are not
trained in medicine or in physical/medical diagnosis and for them to pretend
that they are and to represent that they can and do diagnose physical diseases,
is the practice of medicine without a license.  Psychiatrists, having gone to medical school, studied
pathology/diseases, and how to diagnose them, then elect, in essence, to leave
the practice of medicine.  I say this
for the fundamental reason that psychiatry, as defined when the specialty was
formalized in 1948, by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, by
definition does not deal with the diagnosis or treatment of organic/physical
diseases of the brain; the specialty that does—neurology—is the specialty in
which I am board certified and which I practiced throughout a professional
life. 

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It can only be concluded that the current, January, 2002
Consensus Statement on ADHD, is but another attempt to perpetuate the deception
of the American people, having them continue to believe that ADHD is a brain
“disease” due to a “chemical imbalance” of the brain, always for the purpose of
making them believe in the necessity of “treatment” with “chemical
balancers”—pharmaceuticals—products of the pharmaceutical industry that pays
the salaries and funds the “research” of each and every one of the signatories
and of all ADHD “experts”—“experts” in a disease that does not exist, never
will.   

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 NIH, AD/HD CONSENSUS
CONFERENCE—INAPPROPRIATE, UNNECESSARY

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by Fred A. Baughman
Jr., MD, 5/6/98 ©

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[submitted to
CHADD—ATTENTION Magazine, never published, never acknowledged] 

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In his guest column* 
announcement of the forthcoming, NIH
Consensus Conference on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (AD/HD), Peter S. Jensen, MD, points out that  “…AD/HD has been surrounded by long-standing
controversy.  This controversy,” Jensen
states, “surrounds the actual diagnosis of AD/HD—that is, whether the diagnosis
simply ‘pathologizes’  normal child
behavior and whether it is a function of large classes, to busy parents, or the
machinations of a medical/pharmaceutical cabal.” 

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It has always been thus, with ADHD.   Such need not be the case. The headline of
a long ago Time magazine article [1] read:

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“Doctors say huge numbers of kids
and adults have attention deficit disorder. 
Is it for real.”  

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As through the entire existence of ADHD (by whatever name)
the controversy lives on—for one reason and one reason only–because ADHD
experts and researchers (including Dr. Jensen), Ciba-Geigy, the NIMH and CHADD
refuse to answer the question: 

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“Where in the peer-reviewed
literature are the one or few articles that constitute proof that ADHD is an
actual disease or medical syndrome with a confirmatory, physical (including
chemical or physiologic) abnormality?”

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They have steadfastly refused to answer this question while
continuing to ply the nation’s teachers and the public-at-large with an
expensive, diabolical message that has one and all believing that AD/HD is a
disease—a brain disease, when their is no such proof and when no physical
abnormality is sought or demonstrated, in children said to have it.   

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Having failed , in his letter to me of  October 21, 1997, to provide me with
references to the proof or proofs that AD/HD is a disease—an abnormality within
the children, Dr. Jensen urged that I:

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“note within  the pages of the prestigious British journal
Lancet an article that will soon be forthcoming (James Swanson, et al.) that
reviews all of the biologic evidence for the establishment of ADHD as a bona
fide disorder…”

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 Dr. Swanson, also a
member of the CHADD, Professional Advisory Board, failed to answer my December
5, 1997 request, or any subsequent requests (some by registered mail), either
for an answer to the “Is it a disease or isn’t it?” question or for a copy or
reprint of the “soon to be forthcoming” Lancet article [2]

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Attending the  March
5-8, 1998, meeting of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, I was
surprised to find that  Swanson a was a
last-minute substitute for the announced speaker.  He spoke, among other things, of the MRI brain scan research of
Castellanos, et al [3], and  Filipek, et
al [4], alleged to show brain atrophy in children with ADHD, but not in controls.  

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I spoke from the audience, pointing out that no less than
93% of the subjects in the Castellanos [3] study had been on chronic stimulant
therapy, and inquired as to the stimulant status of those in the Filipek [4]
study.   Swanson acknowledged that the
Filipek study also utilized ADHD subjects who had been on chronic stimulant
therapy–an acknowledgment nowhere to be found in a review of the same articles
either in the in the Lancet article [2] or in the more recent Report of the
Council of Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association [5].

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Here, we had strong, replicated evidence that chronic
stimulant therapy (methylphenidate, amphetamine) causes brain atrophy, not
confirmation of an ADHD phenotype at all, as we were led to believe.

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Next came a rare moment of candor and a forthright answer to
the AD/HD disease/no disease question.  

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Swanson  (from the
tape recording of the session):

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“I would like to have an objective
diagnosis for the disorder (ADHD). 
Right now psychiatric diagnosis is completely subjective…We would like
to have biological tests–a dream of psychiatry for many years.”

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I spoke again from the audience (tape):

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“I salute you candor.  There is no way of confirming ADHD as a
disease in a medical sense.  I am
troubled that in this country we are giving dangerous, addictive drugs to
between 4 and 5 million children who have no demonstrable disease.”

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Swanson (tape):

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“That’s  why we are doing this work. I think we will validate it.  I do
not  think these drugs are dangerous or
addictive when used this way.”

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“I think we will validate it,” he said.  At long last–an honest, open, truly
scientific appraisal from within the ADHD industry:  “I think we will validate it.” 
But when? 

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CHADD estimates that 10-20 percent of schoolchildren–5.2  to 10.4 million, have it.  Most with ADHD are on Schedule II,
stimulants.  When will they validate
ADHD? 

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The Nuremberg Code
does allow for such a situation—the drugging of  millions of children—none of them yet shown to have an actual abnormality
or disease.

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No, Dr. Jensen, a consensus conference will not suffice, and
is not necessary.   A forthright
confession that AD/HD is not a disease, i.e., that the children are normal, is
what is called for and, is long overdue. 
Unless there is a frank and public statement that ADHD is not known to
be a disease, a syndrome (medically speaking) or anything biologic or abnormal
within the child, legitimate research and practice–none of it biologic, cannot
begin, and the consensus conference, as planned, will only be another element
of the fraud.

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References

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1.      Doctors
say huge numbers of kids and adults have attention deficit disorder.  Is it for real?  Time.  July 18, 1994, p43.

2.      Swanson
JM, Sergeant JA, Taylor E, Sonuga-Barke EJS, Jensen PS, Cantwell DP.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and hyperkinetic disorder.  Lancet. 1998;351:429-433

3.       Castellanos FX, Giedd JN, March WL, et
al.  Quantitative brain magnetic
resonance imaging in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.  Arch Gen Psychiatry.  1996;53:607-616.

4.      Filipek
PA, Semrud-Clikeman M, Steingard RJ, Renshaw PF, Kennedy DN, Biederman J.  Volumetric MRI analysis comparing subjects
having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with normal controls.  Neurology. 
1997;48:589-601.

5.      Goldman
LS, Genel M, Bezman RJ, Slanetz PJ, for the Council on Scientific Affairs,
American Medical Association.  JAMA.
1998; 279:1100-1107. 

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* In ATTENTION!, the magazine published quarterly by CHADD,
Spring,1998 issue.

 

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PS  It would be helpful in reading Dr. Jensen’s
writings, and all writings pertaining to science today, if a detailed financial
statement was appended—one disclosing all sources of financial support both for
the spokesperson/researcher and for all of his/her sponsoring
institutions/organizations/companies. 
Will he volunteer such a statement? 

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