The representation of all psychiatric/psychological/mental disorders as diseases is the greatest health care fraud of all time. - Response by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

  Dear Dr. Baughman:

  I am in the process of preparing a 28 page booklet to be distributed free to patients
  and colleagues on ADHD as the third in a 10 part series of booklets that I call "The
  Informed Consent Series."  I would like to quote you on ADHD.  The booklet will be sent to
  all ICSPP members who request it.  I am requesting permission to use the quote from the
  paragraph that I reproduced below.

  Thank you in advance.

  Warmly,
  Lloyd

  Lloyd Ross, Ph.D., P.A.
  27 North Broad Street,
  Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450


  Quote and paragraph is as follows:


  Noted pediatric neurologist Fred Baughman calls ADHD a misdiagnosis of mental
  illness, "the health care fraud of the century." Even the Textbook of Psychiatry (1999),
  published by the American Psychiatric Association states: "With unclear diagnostic
  boundaries, it is difficult to define or even conceptualize a unitary concept of ADHD or
  of its etiology."

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Lloyd, with this wording it is not
clear just what it is that I call 'the health care fraud of the
century.' Allow me to elaborate, please, as it could not possibly be
more important for our country to understand at this moment in time.

It is the representation of ADHD and of all
psychiatric/psychological/mental disorders as diseases, which, by
definition, have demonstrable/diagnosable physical or chemical
abnormalities within the
person/patient that is the greatest health care fraud of the
century—actually, of all time.
(and thus represented by all of organized psychiatry, and the extended
mental health industry, including pediatrics, neurology, child
neurology, child psychiatry, family and general practice— see attached
letter to the editor of PEDIATRICS, to be published in May)

This means that the one adult and two children with ADHD whose deaths
I have learned of just this year, who have died of ADHD, did not die
from any such thing or any mental disease, because there is no
abnormality in any mental disease, rather the only evident physical
abnormalities were those due to the drugs they were on which were deemed
to be necessary, required, treatment for their ADHD. The 30 year old
father/little league coach from Texas, who had used Ritalin during his
school years, died during a nap on the living room couch. The youngest
of the 2 little boys, the one from Minneapolis, was diagnosed with ADHD
at 3 years 7 months of age, and died of his 'polypharmacy'—his multiple,
concurrent, drug intoxication at 8 years and 1 day. The 13 year old
from Tennessee who died in gym class had been on Ritalin long enough to
cause diffuse hypertrophic changes in his muscular heart walls.

Such children were no more abnormal/diseased to begin with than were
the Jewish and
Gypsy and Moorish children 'experimented' upon by Dr. Mengele.

Not only are those 'treated' for ADHD (the 'disease', 'chemical
imbalance') entirely
normal at the outset and until the first and all subsequent drugs
course through their
brains and bodies, but, in addition, all of the ADHD subjects in all
of biological
psychiatry's biological experiments and research are normal as well,
normal, that is, until
the first biological intervention--the first drug/drugs, the first
radio-isotopes the first
angiograms, the first spinal taps, the first implanted pacemakers,
ECT, psychosurgery. What’s more the NIMH and everyone in psychiatric
research knows that the only brain abnormalities they find and
subsequently report and trumpet (as in the ADHD literature with the
brain atrophy) as the confirmation it is a 'disease' is that due to the
medication they have invariably been on—even if their medication
histories are somehow not mentioned.

Back in the mid 90's at NYC, Columbia University, Queen's College and
Mt. Sinai there was a particularly hideous set of experiments in which
normal minority schoolboys with brothers in NY prisons were presumed to
be genetically predisposed to violent
behavior even thought there has never been the least proof of a 'mean
gene' or a ‘mean chromosome’ (I published in the 60’s on the fact that
XYY was not a violence genotype) or a ‘mean chemical imbalance’ or of
any biological determinant of violence in man. And yet, these normal
little boys were then injected with whopping, greater than usual adult
doses of fenfluramine when there was never any truth or science to the
suppositions underlying the 'research'. All psychiatry seeks to do with
it’s entirely bogus, sham research, done on entirely normal
children/subjects, is to create a
'biological' literature meant to be the stuff of press releases and
‘chemical imbalance’ propaganda, the sole purpose of which is to sell
‘chemical balancers’—pills, those manufactured by the controlling
partner—Big Pharma ( see John le Carre on Big Pharma, the multinational
pharmaceutical world, in The Nation, April 9,2001)

All of their 'chemical imbalances' are fraudulent, all of the
millions of children/patients
they 'treat,’ more all the time under court order, are normal (until
the 'treatments' start),
and what’s more, just as in the laboratories of Dr. Mengele and the
rest of Hitlers'
psychiatrists and doctors of infamy--all of the 'subjects' in their
'biological' research, are
entirely normal (and capable of the gamut of normal human emotion and
pain) --until the day the ‘biological’ experiments begin.

Imagine, if you can, that between the late 60’s when they launched their
plan to go ‘biologic’ and today, they have spent billions upon billions
in sham biological research so as to weave illusions of psychiatric
‘diseases’ and ‘chemical imbalances’ for no reason other than to sell
‘chemical balancers’ (pills). Think of it, there was nothing out of
balance to begin with; there was nothing abnormal needing to be made
more nearly normal or normal. Their ‘treatment’ is the first and only
abnormality. Their treatments caused the only abnormalities to be found
in the coroners’ reports on the two, normal-to-begin-with little boys I
mentioned above. This is why I call it the health care fraud and
deception of the century, both of the last century and this; of all
time.

So it is, that of all places, we here in the vain-glorious USA have
our own holocaust under way, and it isn't a foreign nation but a
world-wide industry that has invaded us and that has already
conscripted, damaged, and victimized millions of our once-normal, once
natural, children by the millions.

Thanks for writing, you have forced me to be more clear and thorough--I
hope.
Every claim or inference that such patients/subjects have a disease, is
an abrogation of informed consent. Thus abrogating informed consent has
become the standard of practice throughout the mental health industry,
which includes throughout much of medicine.

Jerold F. Lucey, MD,
Editor                                                           
February 1, 2001
PEDIATRICS Editorial Office,
Fletcher Allen Health
Care,
Burlington, VT 05401

Re: Clinical Practice Guideline: Diagnosis and Evaluation of the Child with
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactiviity Disorder.  Committee on Quality
Improvement, Subcommittee on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. 
PEDIATRICS. 2000;105:1158-

To the Editor,

Clinical Practice Guideline 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.

Goodwin [1], acknowledged the:   ‘…narrow definition of disease
that requires the presence of a biological abnormality.’

 Carey [2] testified at the 1998, Consensus Conference (CC):  ”
…What is now most often described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a
set of normal behavioral variations… This discrepancy leaves the validity of
the construct in doubt…”

The CC Panel [3] concluded: “…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.” *

More recently, Castellanos [4], confessed: “Incontrovertible evidence is
still lacking!”

Where has the notion come from that it is a disease?

Carey [2] observed: “ADHD behaviors are assumed to be largely or entirely due
to abnormal brain function.”   The DSM-IV does not say so, but
textbooks and journals do.”

If not science, what are textbooks and journals to purvey?

Later in the conference, Carey [3] issued the plea:  ” … 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 a 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?”

Pearlman [5], wrote: “I take issue with…Pincus’ (DSM-IV Task Force )
assertion that the elimination of the term ‘organic’ in DSM-IV has served a
useful purpose for psychiatry…elimination of the term ‘organic’ conveys the
impression that psychiatry wishes to conceal the nonorganic character of many
behavioral problems that were, in previous DSM publications, clearly
differentiated from known central nervous system diseases.”

It is apparent that virtually all professionals of the extended ADHD
‘industry’ convey to parents, and to the public-at-large, that ADHD is a
‘disease’ and that children said to have it are ‘diseased’-'abnormal.’ 
This is a perversion of the scientific record and a violation of the informed
consent rights of all patients and of the public-at-large.

The wording of the AAP Guideline should be changed, forthwith, to reflect the
scientific and medical facts of the matter.
 

Sincerely,

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD
Fellow, American Academy of Neurology (board
certified, N, CN)
1303 Hidden Mountain Drive
El Cajon, CA 92019

fred-alden@worldnet.att.net
fax 619 442 1932

References

1. Goodwin D. Is Alcoholism Hereditary?  Ballantine Books, New York, NY.
1989.
2. Carey, WB.  Is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder a
Valid Disorder? Invited presentation to the NIH Consensus Development Conference
on ADHD, November 16-18, 1998, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

3. NIH Consensus Development Conference on ADHD (transcript), November
16-18, 1998, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
4. Pekkanen
J.  Making Sense of Ritalin (interview of F.X. Castellanos). Readers
Digest, January, 2000:159-168.
5. Pearlman T.   Clinical
Psychiatric News (letters). December, 1994.

*This wording appeared in the version of the final statement of the CC Panel
distributed at the press conference, the final part of the CC, November, 18,
1998.  This wording, which appeared for an indeterminate time on the NIH
web site, was subsequently removed and replaced with wording claiming ‘validity’
for ADHD.