Testimony of
Fred A. Baughman Jr. MD (CV attached)
on Psychiatric
Diagnosing and Drugging in Schools
to the
Minnesota State Senate (Monday, March 26, 2001)
and House of
Representatives (Wednesday, March 28, 2001)
For
starters—ADHD does not exist. It is an
invented, for-profit, fraud.
No
abnormality on physical examination, laboratory test, x-ray, scan, smear, or
biopsy–no disease! No disease–no
justification for medical or surgical treatment!
William
Carey [1] of the University of Pennsylvania spoke at the November, 1998,
National Institutes of Health, Consensus Conference on ADHD. He concluded:
“What is…described as ADHD in the United States
appears to be a set of normal behavioral variations…”
With
no proof otherwise, the final statement of the Consensus Conference Panel [2]
of November 18, 1998, read:
“…we do not have an independent, valid, test for
ADHD, and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain
malfunction.”
Carey
[3] beseeched the Panel:
“…we see…that the causes of these behaviors called
ADHD are entirely speculative. And
yet…parents and children are being told that these behaviors are due to brain
malfunction. Can you not please
strengthen the statement to discourage practitioners from making this statement
when there is not adequate proof to support that at this time.”
On
December 13, 1999, Surgeon General, David Satcher [4] announced:
“Mental illness is no different than diabetes,
asthma or other physical ailments…Mental
illnesses are physical illnesses…We
know the chemical disorders we are
treating…”
I
[5] responded to Satcher:
“…all physicians, know that the presence of any bona
fide disease… is confirmed by an objective finding–a physical or chemical
abnormality. You…know… there is no …
abnormality in life, or at autopsy, in “depression, bipolar disorder and other
mental illnesses…” …Your role in this deception is clear…you should resign.”
In January, 2000, twenty years after the
invention of ADD/ADHD, with the epidemic having exploded to between five and
six million, Castellanos [6], observed:
“Incontrovertible evidence is still lacking… I’m
confident we’ll confirm the case for organic causes.”
On
May 1, Waters and Kraus [7] of Dallas filed the first of several class action
suits charging that the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Children and
Adults with Attention-Deficit Disorders
(CHADD), and Ciba-Giegy/Novartis:
“ planned, conspired, and colluded to create,
develop, promote and confirm the diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder and
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, in a highly successful effort to
increase the market for its product Ritalin.”
On
February 1, 2001, I wrote to the editor of the journal PEDIATRICS [In Press,
May, 2001 issue] stating:
“ (The ) Clinical Practice Guideline [8] (of the
American Academy of Pediatrics, co-sponsored by the Child Neurology
Society—CNS, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry–AACAP,
American Psychiatric Association–APA, and the American Academy of Family
Practice—AAFP opens ‘Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is the most
common neurobehavioral disorder of
childhood.’ ‘Neurobehavioral,’ implies an abnormality of the brain: a
disease. And yet, no confirmatory,
diagnostic, abnormality has been found…With six million children said to have
it, most of them on addictive, dangerous, stimulants, ambiguity as to the
scientific status of ADHD is not acceptable…The wording of the AAP Guideline
should be changed, forthwith, to reflect the
scientific and medical facts of the matter.”
According to the 1993, Supreme Court, Daubert
decision, it is the obligation of judges and lawmakers alike, to recognize and
enact, not consensus, belief, or market-place propaganda, but, the prevailing
science.
The
final statement of the Consensus Conference Panel: “there are no data to
indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.” was distributed at the press
conference, November 18, 1998, and was posted on the National Institutes of
Health web site. However, an
indeterminate few weeks thereafter, with no explanation from officials at the
NIH or NIMH, this statement of scientific fact disappeared from the web site
and was replaced by the statement, “there is evidence supporting the validity of
the disorder.” Is this not a perversion
of the scientific discourse; fraud?
In January, 2001, Jeffrey Kubiac, 12, of Buffalo,
NY, appeared ‘zombie-like’ on 3 psychiatric medications for 3 psychiatric
‘diseases’—none of them actual diseases.
His mother, Tammy Marie Kubiac stopped his medications. School personnel called her ‘derelict,’ and
so did the family court judge, who remanded Jeffrey to a psychiatric hospital
and stripped Tammy of custody of all 3
of her children.
According to Imperio [9], the Bazelon Center for
Mental Health reports that gaining access to mental health care for children is
so difficult that parents often end up giving up custody to ensure care. The center estimates that approximately
2.1-4.1 million children aged 9-17 years have a serious mental or emotional
disorder. We are told that last year 23% of parents of children with behavioral
disorders were told that they needed to relinquish custody to obtain intensive
mental health services for their children, and that 20% actually gave up
custody. In that no mental ‘disease’ is
an actual disease, much less a life-threatening disease, how appropriate can
such ‘custody relinquishments’ be?
Matthew Smith 14, of Clawson MI, Stephanie Hall, 11,
of Canton, OH, Cameron Pettus, 12, of Austin, TX, Randy Steele, 9 of San
Antoinio, TX, (plus an 8 year-old from your community I was just told about)
and untold others, have died, not from ADHD—because there is no such
disease—but from the dangerous, addictive, sometime death-dealing drugs that
are invariable used to ‘treat’ it.
With no evidence that ADHD is a diagnosable disease
in any age group, hundreds of thousands of infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers,
in the US as nowhere else in the world, are similarly diagnosed and ‘treated,’
[10] and the NIMH has launched the “Preschool ADHD Treatment Study” which will
prove nothing but will provide the appearance of scientific legitimacy for what
has already become ‘standard’ practice—the drugging of entirely normal infants,
toddlers and preschoolers, with addictive, dangerous, sometime death-dealing,
Schedule II, controlled, psychostimulants.
Writing in the journal, SCIENCE (January 26,
2001,Vol. 291, p. 595), I stated:
“ Regarding the Preschool
ADHD Treatment Study (PATS) that Marshall describes in his article—there is no
disease. No proof exists that ADHD is a
disease with a validating abnormality.”
With no physical abnormality; no disease, the risk vs. benefit analysis tells us that
such ‘treatment’ can do nothing but cause harm to the rapidly-developing brains and bodies of these infants and
toddlers (in fact, of all children).
The PATS study is both unscientific
and immoral and should be embargoed.
A young Tennessee father testified before I did at
December, 1997 hearings in Nashville, in the Tennessee House of
Representatives. He told of meeting his
son’s psychiatrist for the first time.
He asked why the Ritalin was necessary.
The psychiatrist responded: “It’s for his ‘chemical imbalance.’ The father asked: “Please show me the
laboratory work showing the abnormality.” The psychiatrist hesitated, uncomfortably, knowing there was no
laboratory work, knowing there was no ‘chemical imbalance,’ knowing there never
is, then said: “You’ll have to take my
word for it.” The young father, not
satisfied and wary of the medication, announced, “I want the test results, and
I want them now.” The psychiatrist, by
now, thoroughly flustered, and on the defensive, responded, “Take your boy, get
out of my office, and never come back.”
The young father did just that.
Everyone at some time in their life has symptoms of
one sort or another—chest pain, severe headach, or a lump, that causes them
mortal fear. You can do nothing but
pick the best possible physician and trust that they will be competent and tell
you the truth. The first and main part of diagnosis is to
determine whether or not an abnormality is present. Abnormality equals disease. No abnormality—no disease. Treatment,
when you and your physician come to that point, has as it’s goal to make the
abnormality normal, or, at least, more nearly normal. Treatment is recommended by the doctor—not started, but
recommended—after it has been determined ‘which’ disease is present and after
full and truthful ‘disclosure’ of the facts, with which you (for yourself or
your child), give, or withhold,
informed consent.
The happy thing about your initial symptom and the
mortal fear it has begotten, is that a third to a half of all such patients are
found to have no disease, and can be fully assured and returned to their normal
life. Some, from this group—those with no disease, have symptoms due to
the adversities of daily life, such
things as anxiety, depression, anger, over-excitement, panic, tremulousness,
etc., but these are symptoms, not diseases, and almost all of them are
self-limiting and surmountable with appropriate reassurance and counsel in the
form of humane, understanding talk therapy.
In a minority of these cases, the adjunctive use of psychiatric
drugs–short-term and adjunctive only—may have a role to play. All psychiatric drugs, in time, are
brain-damaging, or, both brain-damaging and addictive.
Remember, none of the psychological or psychiatric
‘diseases’ of childhood and adolescent—none
(not even ‘learning disabilities’) are bona fide diseases, with
confirmatory, demonstrable, diagnosable abnormalities in their brains or
body. Children labeled and drugged,
legally, within the schools, by the ‘mental health’ industry are no more
diseased/abnormal than are those drugged, illegally, outside of schools; on the
streets. Their treatment with drugs is
rarely, if ever, appropriate, is never
medically essential, and should never be coerced, forced, or ordered by any
agent or agency of the government, least of all, by public school
personnel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.
Carey, W.B.
Invited presentation: “Is ADHD a Valid Disorder” at the November 16-18,
1998, NIH, Consensus Conference on ADHD.
2.
Final
Statement of the Panel of the NIH, Consensus Conference on ADHD, November 18,
1998,
3.
Carey,
W.B. Discussion of draft of the Report
of the Consensus Conference Panel, November 17, 1998.
4.
Report on Mental Health of the Surgeon
General, December 13, 1999.
5.
Baughman
FA Jr., letter to Surgeon General, David Satcher, December 13, 1999.
6.
Castellanos,
FX. Interview in Making Sense of Ritalin,
Readers Digest, January, 2000.
7.
Law
firm of Waters and Kraus, Dallas, Texas, on <ritalinfraud.com>
8.
Committee
on Quality Improvement, Subcommittee on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder. Clinical Practice Guideline:
Diagnosis and Evaluation of the Child
with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
PEDIATRICS. 2000;105:1158.
9.
Imperio,W.(2000)Practice
Trends. Clinical Psychiatry News, 28,5,49.
10.
Zito,
JM, et al. Trends in the Prescribing of
Psychotropic Medications to Preschoolers. JAMA. 2000; 283:1025-1030.