German Insurer Warns of Steep Rise in Ritalin Use By Ned Stafford (Reuters Health) - Commentary by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

  German Insurer Warns of Steep Rise in Ritalin Use
  Mon Jan 27, 2:21 PM ET
  By Ned Stafford

  BERGISCH GLADBACH (Reuters Health) - The head of one of Germany's major
  public health insurance providers has warned of an "alarming increase" of
  prescriptions in Germany of the stimulant Ritalin  for children and youth.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
They can predict this with no knowledge of medicine or science,
watching market trends, the number of prescriptions, and the actions of
Novartis and it's marketing apparatus ]

  Rolf Stuppardt, chief executive of the public health insurance provider
  IKK, said that Ritalin (methylphenidate), which is used to treat
  attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is being given to a
  portion of children and youths who are falsely diagnosed as having ADHD.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
In that there is no such physical abnormality/disease as ADHD, all
diagnoses are false.]

  In a statement released Friday, Stuppardt demanded that only doctors with
  "special qualifications" be allowed to diagnosis ADHD and prescribe Ritalin.
  

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Which doctors, with which "special qualifications" should
be allowed to diagnose ADHD? Their is no known objective, physical
abnormality, who can diagnose it? How?]

  Stuppardt's demands were based on an IKK report co-written by Stephan T.
  Simon, a pharmacist at the IKK, which covers about 4.4 million people and is
  headquartered in Bergisch Gladbach.
  Simon told Reuters Health Monday that as many as 50% of German children and
  youths taking Ritalin might have been misdiagnosed as having ADHD.
  

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Believing there is such a thing as 'misdiagnosis' leads one to
the belief that their is such a thing as 'diagnosis.']

  The latest statistics for German use of methylphenidate are for 2000, when
  doctors prescribed 13.5 million doses, Simon said. That compares with
  400,000 doses in 1991.
  

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
a 34-fold rise in 9 years]

  National statistics for 2001 and 2002 are not yet available. But Simon said
  that the number of daily methylphenidate doses covered by the IKK jumped
  144% from the first quarter of 1999 to the first quarter of 2001. He
  believes national usage would be similar to the sharp rise seen at the IKK.
  Simon said that in the past few years German general practitioners who are
  not trained in the diagnosis of ADHD have nonetheless increasingly diagnosed
  children as having ADHD and prescribed Ritalin
  

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
They have
discovered that making patients of normals is endless, good,
business]

  . He supports Ritalin for
  treatment of children and youths properly diagnosed as having ADHD but
  believes the drug treatment should be accompanied with therapy.
  

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
This is lip-service, it almost never is]

  Simon said he is concerned that some of the symptoms of ADHD could be
  similar to normal, but difficult, phases that occur when children are
  growing up. Children improperly diagnosed as having ADHD might, as adults,
  believe there is a drug for every problem, he said.
  He blames the US medical community and what he calls its inclination to
  over-prescribe drugs for helping trigger the increase of Ritalin
  prescriptions in Germany.
  "This is coming over like waves from America," he said. 

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Entirely
by design, funded, were we to look, by all of the pharmaceutical
corporations with drugs to prescribe for the invented disease--ADHD.
Ritalin seems to be the one doing the lion's share of the ADHD business in
Germany, which means, Novartis is the paymaster behind the orchestrated,
fraudulent disease and fraudulent epidemic. We, of course, have seen letters
from Novartis personell making the claim--falsely, fraudulently, that ADHD
is a disease]