WHY RITALIN SHOULD NEVER BE PRESCRIBED FOR A CHILD &
SHOULD NEVER, EVER–IN A DEMOCRACY–BE SCHOOL- OR COURT-ORDERED
by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD (5/25/01)
In 1964, when I began practice as a neurologist/child neurologist, it
was understood by neurologists, psychiatrists, and, by all in the
medical profession that neurologists diagnosed and treated organic,
biological abnormalities of the brain–actual diseases (no objective
abnormality = no disease), while psychiatrists concerned themselves with
emotional and behavioral problems, presumably the result of our
environment; our family (or lack of one) or up-bringing and our overall
environment–such things as the stresses of every-day life. At no time
in the 20th century had it been considered otherwise; at no time in the
20th century had psychiatrists thought or claimed otherwise. It wasn’t
until 1970 that I first heard the claim, from within the psychiatric
profession, that diagnoses they made were actual diseases of the brain,
which they alleged were due to abnormalities within the brain of the
patient; their so-called ‘chemical imbalances’ of the brain.
Never before had psychiatrists (or psychologists) claimed to diagnose
brain diseases, never before in my years of practicing
along side of them had they expressed the least willingness to assume
responsibility for saying whether organic disease-real disease-was
present or not. They made very clear that neurologists and all other
kinds of physicians, who referred patients to them, were to determine
whether or not actual disease was present. The first and most
important step in such diagnosing–determining that a patient’s problem
was psychological/psychiatric, was for the referring physician (a
non-psychiatrist) to carry out. He/she was to sufficiently examine and
test the patient so as to be certain that NO physical abnormality/NO
DISEASE was present– given no physical disease, the patient’s subjective
symptoms and complaints were assumed to be psychiatric, psychologic, mental,
environmental,
situational!
Why today, are psychiatrists calling all of the things we used to agree
upon were psychological and situational “disorders’” or “diseases”? Why do
they
say these things are due to a “chemical imbalance” within the brain? Might
it have something to do with the readily observable fact that for every
“chemical imbalance,” there is a “chemical balancer” in the form of a pill,
and
that they appear to make their living these days, not by talking to
people and helping them cope, but by writing prescriptions for
alleged diseases.
The pharmaceutical industry and the brain chemists of medical academia began
synthesizing and trying out brain-acting drugs in the fifties, starting with
Thorazine
for schizophrenia. In the sixties we saw the appearance of more and more
such “balancers” for anxiety, depression, panic attacks, etc, in the form of
Miltown, Librium and Valium, with which the chemical genie was out of the
bottle. Millions of women who were seen as the least bit unhappy, fretful or
dissatisfied ended up on Valium, creating an epidemic from which we are
still recovering. The drug industry accelerated its synthesis of such
compounds, and had more drugs than “illnesses” to treat. At the same time,
the profession of psychiatry was at a a new low–fewer psychiatrists having
a harder time making a substantial income. It was fertile ground for a
coming together. Psychiatry needed help to survive; the drug companies
needed help to achieve the vast profit potentially available in psychiatric
drugs. So what happened? The pharmaceutical industry began subsidizing
psychiatric journals and conferences; they spent huge amounts on perks for
psychiatrists; they paid them to do drug research….in short, the
pharmaceutical industry bailed out a dying profession. In exchange,
psychiatry began to invent new “diseases” which the plethora for psychoactive
drugs could treat. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual has grown from 112 mental disorders in its initial,
1952 edition , to 163 in the 1968, DSM-II , to 224 in the 1980, DSM-III; 253
in the 1987, DSM-III-R, and, 374 in the 1994, DSM-IV. The number,
today, in preparation for the next edition of the DSM is said to be in
excess of 500. This merger between the pharamaceutical industry and
psychiatry has been so incredibly successful that the drug companies are
amassing record profits and the profession of psychiatry is in the seat of
power of our federal mental health system.
In 33 years of practice I have discovered and described a handful of,
hitherto unknown diseases, each with it’s own, confirmatory,
characteristic abnormality (abnormality = disease; no abnormality = no
disease = normal). (see footnote) Contrary to the ways of medical science,
psychiatry has yet to discover an actual physical or chemical imbalance for
so much as a
single one of it’s diseases including the ubiquitous “ADHD.” Unlike the rest
of the medical profession, psychiatry begins treatment, not after
confirmation of disease, but
after labeling, regardless of the fact that no abnormality exists or has
been demonstrated.
Imagine a medical world where internists and family practitioners began
insulin after declaring ‘diabetes’ to whoever walked into their office,
without bothering to perform a blood sugar determination. Imagine beginning
radiotherapy without having proven the existence
of a brain tumor with a brain scan and biopsy, or commencing
coronary bypass surgery without having done arteriograms to actually see
the coronary arteries and prove the presence of occlusions
In claiming that each psychiatric disorder is a disease, a chemical
imbalance, an abnormality within the brain of the child/patient, psychiatry
commits a total, 100% deception, a chilling, monumental deception, the
greatest fraud in the history of medicine!
ADD/ADHD itself is the prototypical fraudulent, invented, contrived
“disorder/ disease.” At the 1998, National Institutes of Health,
Consensus Conference on ADHD, meant to address concerns that we were
labeling and drugging an estimated 5 million schoolchildren (who had seemed
perfectly normal
when they started school), William Carey, MD, Professor of Pediatrics
at the University of Pennsylvania, concluded: “.What is now most often
described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a set of normal
behavioral variations.” Appropriately, the Panel of the Consensus
Conference 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.” Referring to the Consensus Conference Panel’s statement,
Carey added, “. we see the statement that there is no diagnostic test
for ADHD and.that the causes of these behaviors called ADHD are entirely
speculative. And yet, out there in the real world. 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?”
In a letter to me dated September 28, 2000, National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH), Director, Steven E. Hyman, MD offered no proof of
an abnormality, i. e., no proof that ADHD is a disease, much less, a
diagnosable disease. The most august of journals have leant the
appearance of legitimate science and medicine to ADHD, as if it
was an actual disease, fueling the “epidemic,” knowing full-well that
the only physical/chemical abnormalities in the infants, children,
adolescents and adults said to have it are those due to the drug or
drugs that follow the “diagnosis.” These include the journal Science,
the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical
Association, The Lancet, and virtually all US journals of family
practice, pediatrics, neurology and psychiatry.
Courts should over-rule parents on issues of treatment only when the
parental decision overruled clearly places the child’s life at
risk. This is clearly not the case with any known infant, child, adolescent
psychiatric disorder/disease. Not a single one of them is an actual
disease, not a single one of them other than an illusion of a disease. Every
bit of this psychiatric sham is a deception intended to sell drugs for
normal children made
client/patients by appending such fraudulent labels.
In 33 years as a physician, treating all manner of real and often life
threatening disease, I was never involved in a case in which a court
order was sought to overturn a family’s or a patient’s informed decision
to withhold treatment. Within the past decades, courts have sided with
psychiatry in no less than several million cases, to declare “patients,”
with no objective evidence,
a danger to themselves and others, or parents a danger to
their children in order to force oral and injected drugs, ECT, and even
psychosurgery upon them. American citizens of all age are coerced and given
brain damaging “treatments,” for their alleged “brain diseases.” The truth
is they have no disease whatsoever. Like the teachers of the nation, family
court judges across the country have been duped, necessary accomplices in
the stuff of a tyranny.
The cartel that would force the drugging of innumerable but normal US
infants, children and adolescents includes not just Big
Pharma (the world-wide pharmaceutical industry) and psychiatry, but all
within medical academia and our federal and state governments who pass and
enforce laws legitimizing all psychiatric disorders/diseases-not one of
which has been legitimized by science. I enclose as evidence my LETTER TO
THE EDITOR of the journal PEDIATRICS from the May, 2001 issue, page 1239.
footnote:
In CHANDS-the curly hair, anklyloblepharon (eyelids
fused at birth) nail dysplasia (deformed finger and toe nails) syndrome
[Baughman, FA. Birth Defects: Original Article Series, 1971;7
(8):100-102] each effected family member had all 3 tell-tale,
objective, abnormalities. In 1979 we elucidated and reported it’s
autosomal recessive, mode of genetic transmission [Toriella HV,
Lindstrom JA, Waterman DF, Baughman FA. Journal of Medical Genetics.
1979;16 (4):316-317. In 1969 I discovered and described the genetically
transmitted (autosomal recessive) glioma-polyposis syndrome [Baughman
FA, et al. New England Journal of Med. 1969;281:1345-1346]. Effected
members in this tragically stricken, western Michigan family had either
or both: primary cancers of the brain or polyps or cancer of the
colon.
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