The Totality Of The ADD/ADHD Fraud
© Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD (2/4/98) Since Bradley (1937) observed the paradoxical calming effect of amphetamines (stimulants) in 1937, the psychiatry-pharmaceutical complex has sought to invent "diseases" for which to prescribe them. Today, of course, the favored "disease" is ADHD and the favored amphetamine is Ritalin.
In 1970, with 200,000 schoolchildren already on stimulant medication, Cornelius E. Gallagher, D-NJ wrote to Elliot Richardson, Secretary, Department of Health Education, and Welfare, citing criticism of ‘minimal brain dysfunction,’ "...one of at least 38 names ...30 percent in ghetto areas... (that) may not be pathological at all."
Without a confirmatory physical (including chemical) abnormality to make of it a disease, a syndrome (medical), or anything biological, the epidemic, has grown from 200,000 in 1970, to 500,000 in 1985, and to 5-6 million, today.
In April, 1998, The Council on Scientific Affairs of the AMA concluded, "...there is little evidence of widespread overdiagnosis or misdiagnosis of ADHD or of widespread overprescription of methylphenidate." How could they?
As a neurologist who has discovered real diseases, I have sought an answer to the question: "Is ADHD a bona fide disease with a confirmatory physical abnormality?"
On December 24, 1994, Paul Leber, of the Food and Drug Administration wrote: "...as yet no distinctive pathophysiology for the disorder has been delineated."
On October 25, 1995, Gene R. Haislip of the Drug Enforcement Administration replied: "We are also unaware that ADHD has been validated as a biologic/organic syndrome or disease."
On March, 7, 1998, James M. Swanson, (University of California, Irvine) acknowledged (tape recording, American Society of Adolescent Psychiatry): "I would like to have an objective diagnosis for the disorder (ADHD). Right now psychiatric diagnosis is completely subjective."
On May 13, 1998, F. Xavier Castellanos (National Institute of Mental Health) wrote: " I agree that we have not yet met the burden of demonstrating the specific pathophysiology that we believe underlies this condition."
On August 5, 1998, William B. Carey, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, responded: "There are no such articles." (constituting proof that ADHD is a disease or syndrome).
"Experts" regularly proclaim the brain scan abnormalities of ADHD. Barkley (1998) writes: "Imaging studies over the past decade have indicated which brain regions might malfunction in patients with ADHD..." Swanson et al (1998) write: "...magnetic resonance imaging studies of brain anatomy have also reported ...a consistent moderate reduction of about 0.6 SD or 10% of the size in healthy controls..." What they faintly disclose in original reports, and hardly ever mention in subsequent review articles, is that virtually all such studies have utilized ADHD subjects on chronic stimulant therapy--the only physical variable. Instead of proving that ADHD as a disease or syndrome, they have proven, several times over, that the chronic Ritalin-amphetamine exposure they advocate for millions of children, causes brain atrophy (shrinkage).
Because the children were normal to begin with, the risk/benefit ratio of the overall, ADHD, educational-psychiatric-pharmacologic intervention can only be negative, i.e., deleterious. Once diagnosed, they are no longer considered or treated as "normal." Once Ritalin or any other psychiatric drug courses through their system, day-in and day-out, they are no longer physically normal.
Wherever, for a single day, a child, or anyone in the life of a child, is lead to believe that that child is "brain-damaged," "diseased," "subnormal," "abnormal," when they are not--that child has been stigmatized, harmed, damaged (legally as well).
The "damaging" begins with pencil-paper tests and behavior scales--none or them definitive, none a biologic proof . Only damage results when children are labeled "dyslexia," "dyscalculia," "LD," "ADD," "ADHD." None are real diseases or syndromes.
It is as simple as this: if no physical examination, lab test, x-ray, scan or biopsy shows a abnormality in your child, they are normal. Educators, psychologists and psychiatrists do not diagnose actual diseases.
Nor is the damage confined to the child. The whole family is damaged. You shared the joy of their birth--a normal birth, the joy of their walking on time, talking on time and of normal hopes and dreams... of your child the astronaut, doctor, lawyer, Einstein, Edison, Roosevelt, John Glenn. They were to be your future, your family’s, the community’s, the country’s.
But, when they went to school, the hopes and dreams dimmed. They weren’t learning to read--they weren’t being taught. There was talk of dyslexia, dyscalculia, LD, MBD, ADD, ADHD, defective brain "modules" and "chemical imbalances," etc., etc., etc.
Conscripting normal children for special education, occupational, physical or speech therapy further sets the child apart, fixing the diagnosis "in stone." Prescribing something, anything, albeit for a fictitious disease further "hardens" the diagnosis.
Add to this the very real, brain and whole body, abnormalities wrought by Ritalin, and all psychiatric drugs. Consider Stephanie Hall of Canton, Ohio--5 years on Ritalin: daily headache except when off medication, periodic confusion, incoordination, hallucinations, and forced swearing (clear evidence of Ritalin-induced Tourette’s syndrome). None were due to ADHD. And finally, January 6, 1996, the day after an increase in dose, Stephanie Hall did not get up for school. She was found dead in bed.
Stephanie’s death was not a "natural death," nor was her life a "natural life," thanks to the educator-psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex. Every child who goes to public school is at risk. Psychology and psychiatry await. Teacher teaches no more. They have become "diagnosticians." The Nuremberg Code does not allow the abrogation of informed consent (de facto medical malpractice) or the drugging of normal, disease-free, children.
We are not mis-diagnosing or over-diagnosing , mis-treating or over-treating ADHD. It has been a total, 100% fraud throughout it’s 35 year history.
| Index | Links | Home |