Francis I Kittredge, Jr., MD, President 2/18/00 American Academy of Neurology 1080 Montreal Avenue St. Paul, MN 55116 fax 651 695 2791 www.aan.com
Dear Dr. Kittredge,
I am a member of the Child Neurology Society and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.
Enclosed (attached) is a copy of my 2/11/00 press release/letter to the Surgeon General. Needless to say I
am concerned about the lack of validation of so-called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-ADHD as a
disease with a confirmatory physical or chemical abnormality, at a time when 5-6 million US schoolchildren
are being treated for it with addictive, dangerous, and sometimes deadly stimulants, almost all of them
amphetamines.
I am also concerned about the lack of disease validation pertaining to all other school-based,
“neuropsychiatric”, “neurobiologic” disorders, and for the diagnosing, suborned from teachers, with no more
qualifications than any lay-person, which has escalated into a veritable orgy of diagnosing and drugging. As
we know, this drugging includes the whole spectrum of psychotropic, brain-altering, brain-damaging drugs,
neuroleptics (antipsychotics) included, and it is rapidly becoming the standard of practice, albeit with no
proof of efficacy or safety whatsoever, to employ polypharmacy-two, three, four and five drugs at a time,
and to give it not just to children and adolescents, but, reprehensibly-criminally, to my way of thinking– to
infants and toddlers as well.
The risk/benefit ratio of drug treatment with such drugs, with a non-disease on the risk side of the equation
is neither medically nor morally justifiable.
I initiated a practice parameter process regarding ADHD, through the AAN in 1995. I could find no
validation of ADHD as a disease or a medical syndrome, then, and I can find none today. I expressed the
opinion that the determination of whether ADHD was a bona fide disease or syndrome ought to be the
essential first step of the process.
Soon thereafter (I have exact dates and copies of all correspondence) I was removed from the process, told
that the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the CNS, and the American Academy of
Pediatrics would be collaborating on the project. I asked to be included, insofar as the CNS and AAN were
concerned, and I asked to be kept informed. I lodged these requests with Dr. Roy Elterman of CNS and
with Dr. Michael K. Greenberg of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the AAN. But my requests were
for naught. I was never informed of it’s progress or final product, if any.
At this time I would like to know whether such a process has been completed or not and I request that I be
updated on the process. Further, I ask that any policy statements regarding the management of ADHD or
any of the disruptive behavior disorders (DBD’s) be sent to me.
In a brochure entitled “What is a neurologist?” published by the American Academy of Neurology in 1999, it
says “Protecting and treating the brain and nervous system is the essence of a neurologist’s work.”
The epidemic, coercive, administration of Ritalin, amphetamines (5-6 million today said to have ADHD) and
other psychotropic drugs (2-3 million on antidepressants, neuroleptics and others) to 7-9 million entirely
normal school children, fraudulently said to have a brain diseases, is a physical/chemical assault upon them,
against which neurologists should be the front-line of protection. Not only do neurologists have a duty to
determine who is diseased and who is disease-free, they have a duty to protect those who are disease-free
but who are spuriously labeled and treated.
I see it as the duty of the AAN to make clear to the political leadership of the country, including the
Congress, the Senate, the White House, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Department of Health
and Human Services, The White House Drug Czar, General McCaffrey, Senator William Frist,
Congressman Chris Shays, Tipper Gore, and to all of the current presidential candidates, that none of the
psychiatric disorders deceptively referred to as “neuropsychiatric”, “neurobiologic”, etc., etc. are actual
diseases with a confirmatory physical or chemical abnormality.
Most all of these parties have been deceived on this essential point and have come to see such things not
only as actual diseases, but a diseases for which the children and adults having them must be treated,
quarantined or institutionalized against their own American-give free will.
Organic neurology, your specialty and mine, which split apart from non-organic psychiatry in 1948 must not
allow itself to become a party to a deception either to sell spurious treatment to the public or have it forced
down their throats, by law, as being in the best interests of any American child or adult.
What is being done in the name of psychiatric treatment, this very day, should scare every American. And
the lynch-pin of it all is the clearly fraudulent representation of all things psychiatric as actual, neurological
diseases.
Sincerely,
Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD 1303 Hidden Mountain Drive El Cajon, CA 92019 fax 619 442 1932 fred-alden@worldnet.att.net
enclosure: 2 page letter to Surgeon General