THE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN LABELED ADHD (OR ANY PSYCHIATRIC “DISORDER”) WERE NORMAL ALL ALONG - by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD
(a life-long, independent, neurologist/child neurologist)

website: www.adhdfraud.com

Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness [Jeanne Lenzer, British Medical Journal--BMJ 2004; 328: 1458]. As if, in psychiatry, we spoke of diseases of mass destruction, President Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, has just announced that “despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed” and recommends comprehensive mental health screening for “consumers of all ages,” including preschool children. “Each year,” they say, “young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders.” The commission also recommended “Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports” including “state-of-the-art treatments” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”

The problem is that there is nothing specific about these conditions—psychiatric conditions. None of them are actual diseases. And yet, for 34 years, from 1970 to the present, the Congress has enacted (and past presidents have signed) laws assuring the diagnosis and drug treatment of psychiatric disorders, alleged to be diseases, while never, once, requiring proof that they are. Thus it is that the millions of children said to have ADHD, and all psychiatric disorders, are physically, medically, normal until such time as their “treatment”/ drugging commences. In other words, the lives of millions of normal children, in the US and around the world, are needlessly medicalized in the name of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.

On April 15, 1998, I wrote Attorney General Reno: “The biggest health care fraud in US history is the representation of ADHD to be a physical abnormality/disease, and the drugging of millions of normal children …” Every physician knows, ‘disease’ equals ‘physical abnormality’. Nowhere in the brains or bodies of these children, has psychiatry found an abnormality.

On July 15, 1996, Congressman Christopher Shays cautioned: “In ADHD, we are trying to draw the line between personality and pathology, and we are placing millions of children and adults on either side of the social, medical and legal boundary that divides the healthy from the sick. We should do so only with the greatest care, and with particular reticence to make our children medical patients…”

In 1948, ‘neuropsychiatry’ was divided into ‘neurology,’ dealing with organic diseases of the brain, and ‘psychiatry,’ dealing with psychological conditions in normal human beings. However, pychiatric drugs appeared in the fifties and in the sixties psychiatry and pharmaceutical industry authored a joint market strategy: they would call emotional problems “brain diseases,” due to “chemical imbalances” needing “chemical balancers”—pills!

On October 12, 1970, Congressman, Cornelius Gallagher wrote HEW Secretary, Elliott Richardson: “I have received letters highly critical of the focus of the medical side of minimal brain dysfunction (the reigning designation at the time), which is, incidentally, one of at least thirty-eight names attached to this condition…Such a high incidence in the population–as high as thirty percent in ghetto areas…may not be pathological at all…”

On November 3, 1970, Elliot L. Richardson, Secretary, HEW, responded to Representative Gallagher, Chairman of Right to Privacy Inquiry: “As you notice stimulant drug treatment of children with this disorder began in the late 1930’s and has been widely accepted as safe and effective by the medical community…We have no vested interest in the use of any one treatment modality and are continuing to look for the most effective treatments and treatment combinations for this disorder.”

It was as this hearing, entitled, Federal Involvement in the Use of Behavior Modification Drugs on Grammar School Children of The Right to Privacy Inquiry Hearing Before Subcommittee on The Committee on Government Operations House of Representatives 91st Congress, Second Session, September 29, 1970, that a psychiatric condition, hyperactivity, a.k.a., minimal brain dysfunction, was first represented to be not just a behavior, but an actual disease.

John E. Peters, child psychiatrist, Child Study Center, University of Arkansas, claimed: “It is not known exactly the underlying organic condition, or psychological condition, behind MBD. We feel it has to do with some dysfunction of the brain, and we have to go mainly by analogy between children who have known brain damage and the behavior in children who do not have known brain damage, but do have identical behavior. So by deduction, we assume that there has to be some dysfunction of the brain.”

Dr. Ronald Lipman, Chief, Clinical Studies Section, US Food and Drug Adminsistration: “All that I am saying that hyperkinesis is something that brings the child into conflict with his parents, peers, and teachers, and that the teacher observes behavior and has a referral role to play. But, as you know, hyperkinesis is a medical syndrome. It should be properly diagnosed by a medical doctor.”

Chairman Gallagher (to Lipman): “Then further you state, ‘I think the results of the last few years research will soon reach the nation’s doctors. The pediatricians will begin using them? In effect, what will happen is it will zoom as word of its success spreads through the medical community.”

Lipman: “I don’t use the word “zoom.”

Gallagher: “I think your enthusiasm led to the word zoom.”

Then, in 1970, 150,000 children were drugged for school-based mental disorders. Today, the number, conservatively is 9 million—15-20 percent of US schoolchildren—with 6-7 million of them diagnosed ADHD, successor of “hyperactivity,” on Ritalin and amphetamines, schedule II stimulants, all highly addictive and dangerous.

From then on they called hyperactivity, MBD, ADD, ADHD and all other mental/psychiatric conditions “brain diseases” justifying, needing, requiring, chemical balancers—drugs for the chemical imbalances.

The “cornerstone” of psychiatry’s disease model today, is the concept that a brain-based, chemical imbalance underlies mental disease. While popularized by heavy public marketing, this notion has been thoroughly discredited by researchers; not a single one, in 34 years of trying, has been validated as an abnormality = disease, within the brain or body of an individual.

We can trace the birth of modern medicine to 1858 when Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) released his Cellular Pathology as Based upon Physiological and Pathological Histology. The study of pathology as the phenomenology of disease, combined with the study of bacteriology as the cause/etiology of infectious disease, placed medicine as the study of bodily disease on the rock-solid foundation of modern science. Given the new, scientifically-based practice of medicine, it could be determined whether a mass (lump) was a cancer or an abscess, before treatment was planned and a prognosis rendered. No longer was all diagnosis symptom/complaint based, as was the case previously, and as is the case, today with “biological psychiatry” which makes a “disease” of every subjective psychological complaint. Consider ADHD, OCD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder in the light of objective medical science. Quite simply, not one is an actual disease.

Given their new market plan and more new drugs to peddle by the day, 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. ADHD has become psychiatry’s number one, “biologically-based” “disease.”

In 1980, they invented ADD; in 1987, ADHD. 8 of 14 behaviors were diagnostic!

In 1994, ADHD was re-conceptualized; now, six of the nine behaviors diagnosed 3 subtypes.

Soon they made the schools of the nation an accomplice. In 1996, Schiller, of the Department of Education, and Peter S. Jensen and James M. Swanson of the NIMH & CHADD, wrote: “Once parents and teachers…recognize that children with ADD are not lazy or ‘bad’, but have a biological disorder, they can stop blaming themselves…”
On October 8, 1996, Diller wrote to activist-mother, Sue Parry: “The reason you have been unable to obtain any articles presenting clear evidence of a physical or chemical abnormality is there are none… the search for a biological marker is doomed from the outset because of the contradictions and ambiguities of the diagnostic construct of ADHD…”

Pearlman, himself a psychiatrist, wrote: “I take issue with the APA assertion that elimination of the term “organic” in the 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 …” Dr. Pearlman, try “all.”

On May, 13, 1998, ADHD researcher, FX Castellanos [12] of the NIMH confessed to me: “… we have not yet met the burden of demonstrating the specific pathophysiology that we believe underlies this condition.”
Opening the November 16-18, 1998, NIH, Consensus Conference on ADHD, Stephen E. Hyman Director of the NIMH, posited: “ADHD affects from 0-3% in some school districts up to 40% in others… this cannot be right.”

If ADHD were a real disease like heart attacks, diabetes, and strokes, would the frequency be 5-7 times higher in Western Australia than in other provinces of the country. Of course not. Nor is it a matter or “overdiagnosis” or “misdiagnosis” their favored explanations. Only when you understand that it is a “total, 100% fraud” will you truly understand ADHD and all psychiatric “diseases” and “chemical imbalances.”

At the November, 1998, NIH Consensus Conference, pediatrician William B. Carey, reporting on “Is ADHD a Valid Disorder?” concluded: “What is…described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a set of normal behavioral variations.” What Carey asserted was that no one or several such behaviors as psychiatry lists in its DSM, are abnormal and a sign of a disease.

Commenting on the Report of the Consensus Conference Panel, Richard Degrandpre, author of the book Ritalin Nation observed: “… it appears that you define disease as a maladaptive cluster of characteristics. In the history of science and medicine, this would not be a valid definition of disease.” Having failed to prove that ADHD is a disease, they sought to re-define the word ‘disease’.

I too, was an invited speaker at the Consensus Conference, and testified [16]: “Without an iota of proof the NIMH proclaim the children “brain-diseased,” “abnormal.” CHADD, funded by Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis), has spread the “neuro-biological” lie. The US Department of Education, absolving itself of controlling the children and rendering them literate, coerces the labeling and drugging. ADHD is a total, 100% fraud.”

The final statement of Panel, November 18, 1998, was: “ …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.” Here we were, 28 years after the first, 1970, representation of hyperactivity/ADHD to be a disease, with the US epidemic at an astounding 4-5 million and they confess there is no proof that ADHD is a disease.

Nonetheless, the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association (yet another conspirator) concluded: “…there is little evidence of widespread over-diagnosis or mis-diagnosis of ADHD or of widespread over-prescription of methylphenidate (Ritalin).” On April 29, 1999, I challenged their conclusion, writing: “Once children are labeled with ADHD, they are no longer treated as normal. Once Ritalin or any psychotropic drug courses through their brain and body, they are, for the first time, physically, neurologically and biologically, abnormal.”

In November 28, 1999, I wrote Matthew D. Cohen, President of CHADD: “You state ADHD is a severe neurobiological condition…How does CHADD justify calling so many normal children diseased, abnormal…for purposes of justifying prescriptions for them, of addictive, controlled, Schedule II, psychostimulant medications?”

On December 13, 1999, Surgeon General, David Satcher 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 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, thirty (30) years after the first claim that hyperactivity/ADHD was a disease, Castellanos, observed: “Incontrovertible evidence is still lacking… I’m confident we’ll confirm the case for organic causes.”

On May 1, 2001, Waters and Kraus of Dallas filed the first of several class action suits charging that the APA, 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.” That this suit failed did nothing to validate ADHD as a disease.

In 1993 I testified in hearings at the NIH on research on “Antisocial, Aggressive and Violence-Related Behaviors and their Consequences. This hearing had to do with the Violence Initiative and the funding of psychiatric research through the Violence and Traumatic Stress Research Branch (VTSRB) of the NIMH. Psychiatric “diseases” such as ADHD, conduct and oppositional-defiant disorders, the disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) are held to predisposed to aggressive and violent behavior and are among the entities to be studies at the NIH, mainly at the NIMH. What’s more, biological research was to be funded, holding that these are brain diseases/chemical imbalances for which medical treatments should be found. I testified: “If, as I am convinced, these entities are not diseases, it would be unethical to initiate research to evaluate biological interventions—unethical and fatally flawed scientifically.”

In the December 22/29, 1999 Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA. 1999;282:2290], we find the musings of heads of the constituent institutes of the National Institutes of Health, as to what the future portends for their specialties. Targeting the year 2020, Steven E. Hyman, MD, Director of the NIMH states, remarkably enough: “By 2020 it will be a truth, obvious to all, that mental illnesses are brain diseases that result from complex gene-environment interactions. We will be reaping the therapeutic benefits that accrue from the discovery of risk genes for autism, schizophrenia, manic depressive illness, and other serious mental disorders. We will also routinely analyze real-time movies of brain activity derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging, optical imaging, or their successor technologies, working together with magnetoencephalography or its successor technology. In these movies, we will see the activity of distributed neural circuits during diverse examples of normal cognition and emotion; we will see how things go wrong in mental illness; and we will see normalization with our improved treatments.”

Amazingly, not a single mental, emotional or behavioral disorder has been validated as a disease or a medical syndrome with a confirmatory physical or chemical abnormality or physical marker within the brain or body. Furthermore, Hyman knows this. And yet the NIMH and all in academic psychiatry and mental health regularly represent all of the “serious mental disorders” to be diseases, just as though they were, and would have the public, the Congress, the President, and the judiciary believe that they are.

What Hyman (now Provost at Harvard University) discloses here is their wholly duplicitous campaign of deception. They invent psychiatric disorders within the confines of the DSM committee of the APA–not one a disease–and then apply every know tool of science to these normal subjects, generating their pseudo-scientific literatures in brain chemistry, microscopy, electron-microscopy, pathology (from their autopsy material brain banks.

But, whoa, let me apologized, they do find abnormalities, especially over time, because every patient they “diagnosis” they “treat” with one or several drugs and sooner or later these drugs, all brain and body poisons, cause microscopic if not gross and microscopic abnormalities, as well. Nor can there be any doubt of the havoc all wreak at the chemical level. The next thing that assures that what they do is pseudo-science is that they represent all of the damage they find to be their “proof” that the disease being “treated” has now been validated. (We well see all of these characteristics of their research at work in their structural CT and MRI brain scanning research).

Among their arguments when criticized is “how do you know we won’t one day find proof it (DSM diseases A-Z) is a disease?” And thus they justify continuing their research which actually is unjustifiable. Consider that they take ADHD subjects and their relatives and do spinal taps, place indwelling catheters, do intra-arterial punctures and injections, expose to the radiation of CT scans, of PET scan, inject poisons such as fenfluramine, methylphenidate, dextro and/or levo amphetamines—all in persons they know at the outset have no objective abnormality/disease, all in persons they know to be normal, all in subjects—children and adults, they know they have lied to by way of informed consent, leading ever one to believe that it is a disease process that is being researched, that they have, that stands to be improved. It is the NIMH itself that does much of the research in biological psychiatry and what they don’t do themselves the fund and coordinate, and the manuscripts that report this “research” are carefully orchestrated for content by a cadre from the NIMH and US psychiatric academia so as to keep the illusions of diseases and or drug safety and effectiveness alive, when, indeed, it is all—every bit of it—a colossal lie and deception.

In treatment and research, whether they might find the proof one day or not is beside the point. In the treatment situation, the physician may not initiate medical (or surgical) treatment until they have found and defined an abnormality/disease. Nor may a researcher, perform risk-bearing injurious physical intervention until an abnormality/disease has been defined. But, of course, the every treatment of biological psychiatry and the every research experiment of biological psychiatry wholly violates these strictures.

ADHD researchers are forever claiming that an abnormal gene or genes is the cause of ADHD—the abnormal genotype (gene-chromosome makeup/constitution) that is responsible for the for the ADHD phenotype. The problem here is that phenotype refers to the physique or total physical package that is determined by and goes with an existing genotype or set of genes. We know what the normal phenotype is and the normal genotype (46, XY or 46, XX) that determines it. Likewise, most are familiar with phenylketonuria due to an absence or marked diminution of the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase (with a resultant build-up of phenylalanine and deficiency of tyrosine) due to an absent or defective autosomal recessive gene—the PKU genotype. If there is no physical trait or abnormality, i.e., phenotype there is no manifestation of a particular genotype. Such is a persistent problem with ADHD and in all of biological psychiatry where they continually claim the presence of abnormal genes-genotypes as the cause of psychiatric disorders, where they have yet to confirm the presence of a single physical abnormality/disease/abnormal phenotype. This too, as in the following article is nothing but biological pseudoscience and disease-mongering.

Because psychiatric disorders are biologically/physically indistinct–biological/physical research, no matter how long or expensively pursued, or how sophisticated the technology applied, is doomed to prove nothing. What’s more Surgeon General Satcher, his successor Dr. Carmona, Dr. Hyman, and all at the NIMH, know this. Might it be pure fraud?. The only purpose, I submit, for such research is to establish a ‘medical’/biological’ literature, and, illusions of biology, neurology and disease, where none exist. Without illusions of disease there would only be normal children, no patients. Why else do they speak of the “volumes,” “years,” and “weight” of their literature but never of proof. Why do they continually say ADHD is the “most-studied” disease of all time?

Why else would Pam have written: “If each emotion is not physiologically distinctive, there can be no biological marker for each type or subtype of emotional pathology, and thus most current research would be methodologically inappropriate…the preponderance of research contributed by biological psychiatry up to the present is questionable or even invalidated by the criticisms just made.”

Nasrallah, et al (1986) did CT brain scans on twenty-four adult males with a childhood history of hyperkinesis/minimal brain dysfunction, all treated with stimulant drugs (primarily methylphenidate/Ritalin) during childhood. Fifty-eight percent (58%), fourteen of twenty-four, had brain atrophy, compared to one of twenty-seven, controls (3.8 percent), with the difference being highly significant. They concluded: “The data in this study is suggestive of mild cerebral atrophy in young male adults who had a diagnosis of HK/MBD during childhood and had received stimulant drug treatment for a period of time… since all of the HK/MBD patients had been treated with psychostimulants, cortical atrophy may be a long-term adverse effect of this treatment.”

With this finding, Nasrallah et al, challenged the ADHD research community to compare ADHD-untreated subjects to ADHD-treated subjects to determine if the brain atrophy in their study was a function of ADHD or of the Ritalin/stimulant treatment. At this point all should understand that to determine whether ADHD is an abnormality/disease or not (which has not yet been proved) researchers would have to compare (a) normals to (b) ADHD-untreated, finding an abnormality in the ADHD-untreated. If the ADHD subjects are treated, whether with one or several drugs–the treatment, being a known physical factor–would be the likely cause of any abnormality subsequently found. This would be especially so in psychiatry where not a single disorder/condition has yet been proved to be a disease.

And so, to prove whether ADHD is a disease or not, one would have to compare (a) normal controls to (b) ADHD-not treated. If no abnormality is found in (b) the conclusion would have to be ADHD has not yet been shown to be abnormal, to be a disease.

To tell whether ADHD or a drug is causing a given abnormality one would have to compare (a) ADHD-treated to (b) ADHD-untreated. If only (a) the ADHD-treated are found to be abnormal, not (b) ADHD-untreated, it would have to be concluded that the treatment—the drug or drugs is the cause of the abnormality.

Now, let us look at the structural-anatomic, CT and MRI brain scan research from Nasrallah—1986 through the ADHD Consensus Conference, held at the National Institutes of Health, November 16-18, 1998.

At the Consensus Conference, Swanson and Castellanos reviewed the structural-anatomic MRI literature (the only line of evidence, they claimed, suggesting that ADHD was indeed an actual disease, a brain disease) and concluded: “Recent investigations provide converging evidence that a refined phenotype of ADHD/HKD (hyperkinetic disorder) is characterized by reduced size in specific neuroanatomical regions of the frontal lobes and basal ganglia.” Nor did they (Swanson presenting) leave any doubt that they were claiming that the brain atrophy was the biological basis of ADHD.

The 14 such studies Swanson and Castellanos reviewed at the Consensus Conference were: Hynd et al, (1990), Hynd et al, (1991), Hynd et al, (1993), Giedd et al, (1994), Castellanos et al, ( 1994) Semrud-Clikeman et al, (1994), Baumgardner et al, (1996), Aylward et al, (1996), Castellanos et al, (1996), Filipek et al,(1997), Casey et al, (1997), Mataro et al, (1997), Berquin et al, (1998), and Mostofsky et al, (1998), dealt with ADHD-treated subjects, proving, time and again, that the treatment/drugs, not the never-validated “disease” ADHD, were the cause of the brain atrophy.
In virtually all of these studies, the titles, abstracts, conclusions, and press releases, crowed the finding of brain atrophy/shrinkage and insisted, time and again they were the proof that ADHD is a brain disease, never saying a word–except in the fine print of the full manuscript–that virtually all of the subjects were treated (ADHD-treated) and, of course that their treatment with the poisons–Ritalin and the amphetamines–not the never validated “disease” ADHD is surely the cause of their brain atrophy.

When Swanson had finished his presentation, not saying a word about the “treated” status of virtually all of the ADHD subjects in the studies reviewed, I asked: “Dr. Swanson, why didn’t you mention that virtually all of the ADHD subjects in the neuroimaging studies have been on chronic stimulant therapy and that this is the likely cause of their brain atrophy?” Swanson: “…this is a critical issue and in fact I am planning a study to investigate that.”

With no proof of a biological basis for ADHD, the final statement of the Consensus Conference Panel, November 18, 1998, could only be the confession: “ …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.”

A January, 2000, Readers Digest article reported: “Castellanos and his group found three areas of the brain to be significantly smaller in ADHD kids than in normal children…Some critics claim that such brain differences in ADHD children might actually be caused by Ritalin…To address this, Castellanos has now embarked on another study, imaging the brains of ADHD youngsters who have not been treated with drugs.”

Here we were in January, 2000, with the ADHD epidemic at 5 to 6 million, and a controlled study of a Ritalin/amphetamine-naïve, ADHD cohort had yet to be done.

In 2001, Baumeister and Hawkins wrote: “Neuroimaging studies have been conducted with increasing frequency in recent years in attempts to identify structural and functional abnormalities in the brains of persons with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Although the results of these studies are frequently cited in support of a biologic etiology for this disorder, inconsistencies among studies raise questions about the reliability of the findings. The present review shows that no specific abnormality in brain structure or function has been convincingly demonstrated by neuroimaging studies.”

31 years of representing ADHD as a disease, and, still, no proof to be found.

Nor is there a biological basis for ADHD otherwise. They speak of things “genetic” and “biochemical” to weave illusions of disease. In the early nineties they put all of their hopes in the never-replicated, Zametkin, PET scan study and the NIMH called it a “disease.”

In their October 9, 2002, study, Castellanos et al wrote: “This is the first neuroimaging study ( the first in all of the MRI literature, 1986-2002) to our knowledge to include a substantial number (n = 49) of previously unmedicated children and adolescents with ADHD.” Here we have a confession there has never in 16 years of brain scanning been a study of an ADHD-unmedicated group of patients. The 49 ADHD-unmedicated subjects had a mean age of 8.3 years vs. the 139 controls with whom they were compared, with a mean age of 10.5 years; 2.2 years younger! How could the ADHD-unmedicated not be smaller, overall? How could they not have smaller brains? Next, they compared ADHD-medicated (n = 103) to ADHD-unmedicated (n = 49) subjects. The ADHD-unmedicated subjects, mean age 8.3 years, were 2.6 years younger than the ADHD-medicated subjects, mean age 10.9, years. Nor were these two groups suitable for comparison. But this did not stop Castellanos, et al from concluding, as it was predetermined that they should, that: (1) “…the cerebrum as a whole and the cerebellum are smaller in children and adolescents with predominantly combined type ADHD,” or, (2) “Conversely, we have no evidence that stimulant drugs cause abnormal brain development,” neither conclusion justified given that none of the comparisons were valid.

Once again, as throughout 16 years of MRI brain scanning research, Castellanos, and the NIMH refused to do a valid study, the comparison of a group of ADHD- untreated to a truly matched control group. A truly matched control group could have been constituted, but was not. Rather, since the 1986, Nasrallah study, they have known that Ritalin-amphetamine treatment induces brain atrophy and they have proven this time-after-time, obscuring however possible their “drugged” status while consistently representing that the atrophy produced is, instead, due to ADHD, the abnormality of the brain confirming it is a disease, a brain disease.

Starting with an always-subjective behavioral-emotional, DSM, construct, their biological-medical research is destined never to prove a thing. Instead, in this study and in all such studies in “biological psychiatry” the only abnormalities found—and they are real—are those induced by the brain-damaging drugs they are invariably put on.

In fact the entire ADHD-MRI literature, all of it showing atrophy of the brain and brain parts, all of it performed on stimulant-medicated cohorts is proof, replicated time and again, that these medications, not the never-validated “brain disease” ADHD, are the cause of the brain atrophy.

Using anatomic/structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Bartzokis et al (2003) found that both cocaine-dependent and amphetamine dependent adults had significantly smaller temporal lobe volumes (these were not ADHD subjects). This too supports the suspicion that it is the encephalopathic Ritalin/amphetamine drugs that is the cause of the brain atrophy disclosed time and again in the MRI research of 1990 through 2003.

The 2003 study of Sowell et al, showed brain atrophy but once again failed to include an ADHD-untreated group. Can there be any doubt that the their market plan is to scan ADHD-treated subjects, knowing they will find brain atrophy, say little or nothing about the fact of their treatment and then represent, in all but the finest print, the brain atrophy to be the “proof “ that ADHD is a “disease.”

The 2003 review of Leo and Cohen lead them to conclude: “We found that most subjects diagnosed with ADD or ADHD had prior medication use, often for several months or years. This substantial confound invalidates any suggestion of ADHD-specific neuropathology. Moreover, the few recent studies using unmedicated subjects have inexplicably avoided making straightforward comparisons of these subjects with controls.”

Can their be any doubt that the intention of “biological” research in psychiatry is to weave illusions of diseases, without which they would have nothing and no one to treat.

On May 28, 2002, I wrote to Bernard Alpert, MD, President of the Medical Board of California (MBC): “Every time parents or a patient is lead to believe that their child’s emotional/behavioral problem is a “disease” due to an abnormality within their body or brain, they have been lied to, their informed consent rights wholly violated…”

On June 14, 2002, Dr. Alpert, responded: “As you outline in your letter, there is tremendous professional support for categorizing emotional and psychological conditions as diseases of the brain. In published materials, some quoted in your letter, you will find that support from chairs of psychiatry departments, the American Psychiatric Association and professors of major medical schools. It is clear that the psychiatric community has set their standard, and while one might disagree with it, that standard becomes the legal standard upon which the Board (CMB) must base its actions.”

Unbelievably, what Alpert, speaking for the Medical Board of the State of California is saying here, is that whatever the majority do, even lie, knowingly violating the informed consent rights of all patients, that that becomes the unassailable, legal “standard of practice. ” Consider, if you will that, conversely, to tell patients the truth—specifically, that ADHD and all psychiatric diseases are not diseases at all, or to fail to prescribe “chemical balancers”- drugs for each and every “chemical imbalance of the brain” would be contrary to the “standard of practice” putting the physician who is the purveyor of truth and science, in legal jeopardy.

I say to the Congress and now, to President Bush, as well: should you pass any law, in any way, “assuring,” or, sanctioning, the “diagnosis” and “treatment” of psychiatric “diseases”/ “chemical imbalances,” in NORMAL children (as is now done, California- and US-wide) or, should you fail to expunge such laws, already on the books—and you will have been a party to a fraud.