GIVING METHAMPHETAMINE, RITALIN, DEXEDRINE BEFORE BIRTH by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Neurology/Child Neurology 8/7/01

[from NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jul 30, 2001]

Children who are exposed to
methamphetamine in utero have altered brain chemistry. Using a new
technology called magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the UCLA research
team found that 12 children, mean age 8 years, whose mothers used
methamphetamine during pregnancy had 10% greater levels of creatine in
the striatum-groups of cells deep in the brain that have mostly to do
with posture and movement. However, none of the children had visible
structural abnormalities on MRI scans of the sort used routinely in
brain diagnosis. All of the methamphetamine-exposed children in this
study had mothers who were dependent on the drug for at least two
trimesters of their pregnancy. Half were also prenatally exposed to
cigarette smoke, and four mothers said they drank some alcohol while
they were pregnant.

While these children appear to be normal at this time, this is an
induced, departure from the normal chemical profile of the brain–an
abnormality, and cannot be viewed as an improvement, whether the
children seem normal or not, and whether or not there are
structural/anatomic changes of the sort to be seen on MRI scan.
Methamphetamine is allowed by the FDA to be legally prescribed for the
fraudulent, illusory “disease” ADHD.

Moreover, Ritalin (methylphenidate, family to the amphetamines),
Adderall, Dexedrine (both forms of pure amphetamine), and virtually all
psychostimulants presently prescribed, are of the same chemical family,
and are known to cause brain atrophy (shrinking, shriveling, on average
10%) and likely do so by first inducing subtle chemical abnormalities
such as that demonstrated in these children exposed to methamphetamine
prenatally.

The challenge to these researchers, Dr. Lynne M. Smith and colleagues
from the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center [July 24th issue of Neurology,
Neurology 2001;57:255-260] will be to do a similar study in pregnant
women who take Ritalin (methylphenidate), Adderall, Dexedrine (both
forms of pure amphetamine) under the mistaken notion that they have a
real disease-ADHD, for which such things are essential treatment. Will
the pharmaceutical industry allow it? They have absolute veto power
nowadays. There are, no doubt, thousands of such pregnant women in
their practice area at any point in time, with thousands of developing
embryos and fetuses, being prenatally exposed to Ritalin
(methylphenidate), Adderall, Dexedrine (both forms of pure amphetamine),
which just like methamphetamine (proprietary names Desoxyn, Gradumet)
are Schedule II, controlled, addictive, substances. Can they legally be
administered to normal embryos and fetus’s not meeting criteria for a
DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD?

I am sure the DSM Committee of the American Psychiatric Association is
at work developing diagnostic guidelines. After all, we have just
learned that children as young as one and two years of age are being
“diagnosed” and “treated,” and the National Institute of Mental Health
has just launched PATS-the Preschool ADHD Treatment Study, of which UCLA
and UC-Irvine are a part.

And all of this with ADHD never proved to be a bona fide disease.