There is questionable evidence whether Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is in fact a
bonafide disease.
Further, it has been disclosed in studies of amphetamine treatments (such as Ritalin), that
chronic Ritalin-amphetamine exposure causes brain atrophy (shrinkage).On December 24, 1994, Paul Leber, of the Food and Drug Administration wrote, "... as yet, no distinctive pathophysiology for [A.D.H.D.] as a disorder has been delineated." On October 25, 1995, Gene R. Haislip of the Drug Enforcement Administration replied, "We are also unaware that A.D.H.D. has been validated as a biologic/organic syndrome or disease." On March 7, 1998, James M. Swanson, University of California acknowledged, "I would like to have an objective diagnosis for the disorder (A.D.H.D.). 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 A.D.H.D. is a disease or syndrome." In 1970, 200,000 schoolchildren were on stimulant medication. By 1985, this figure grew to 500,000 and then to epidemic proportions of approximately 6 million today. There is evidence that there are brain abnormalities wrought by Ritalin, and all psychiatric drugs. Consider Stephanie Hall of Canton, Ohio. She was five years old and on Ritalin: daily headaches except when she was off the medication, periodic confusion, lack of coordination, hallucinations, and forced swearing (clear evidence of Ritalin-induced Tourette Syndrome). Finally, January 6, 1996, one day after an increase in dose, Stephanie did not get up for school. She was found dead in bed. Stephanie's death was not a "natural" death; it was a direct result of the drug she was given. If no physical examination, lab test, x-ray, scan or biopsy shows an abnormality in your child, they are normal. Educators, psychologists and psychiatrists do not diagnose actual diseases. Source: Dr. Fred A. Baughman, Jr., Child Neurologist, and M.D., article written Feb. 4, 1998 THE NEW YORK POST RITALIN PUSHER CHANGES HIS TUNE ON SCHOOLS By DOUGLAS MONTERO ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- September 27, 2002 -- WASHINGTON. A NATIONAL parent group that has been accused of encouraging the widespread use of Ritalin on behalf of the manufacturer wants educators to stop pressuring parents to drug their kids. That startling admission comes as the acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health said there is a concern that many doctors across the nation are misdiagnosing kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - which is turning hospitals and clinics into pill mills. E. Clarke Ross, who heads the 20,000-member group Children and Adults with ADHD, made the admission just before he testified yesterday before Congress - which is investigating the out-of-control practice of schools medicating children. "Their job is to teach and [to] observe barriers to learning, not practice medicine," Ross said. Ross, who was called before the House Government Reform Committee to explain why Ritalin is appropriate for kids, also said the drug is overprescribed in some areas but underprescribed in others. Ross was blasted on Capitol Hill by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the committee chairman, who accused the medical professor of being in the pocket of drug lobbyists. Nearly shouting, he charged Ross with creating an "appearance" that his organization was compromised, since it received money from drug companies. Burton later told The Post he would like to see restrictions on how health associations are funded. But Ross denied allegations by advocates and several government agencies that he's lobbying for Ritalin use - despite the estimated $1 million his organization has received over the past 10 years by Ritalin's manufacturer. Burton said 6 million kids in America are taking Ritalin, while officials with the National Institutes of Health say the number is only 2 million. Regardless, the damage has already been done. Dr. Richard K. Nakamura, head of the National Institute of Mental Health, said, "We are concerned about improper diagnoses of ADHD. "There's a possibility that physicians are told, 'You have X amount of time to diagnose XYZ' by their managed-care organization. I believe physicians are being given too little time and money to properly diagnose." He said a proper diagnosis comes with extensive tests to determine whether a child-behavior or learning disability may be attributed to other problems, such as autism or dyslexia. A number of New York parents have complained that many doctors referred to them by the schools usually spend a mere 45 minutes with their kids before prescribing Ritalin. The doctors usually make their diagnoses by looking over a school evaluation report on the child's behavior, which many say is subjective and leads to abuse. The complaints from parents last month forced both the state and city Education departments to issue memos reminding educators that banning a kid from school because the parents refuse to medicate is a violation of the rules. Yet Jill Chafeitz, the executive director of Advocates for Children, said Wednesday her office is still receiving complaints from parents. According to industry and government figures: - Methylphenidate production nationally rose 406 percent from 1991 to 2000. - Per-capita consumption of the drug rose 566 percent in New York state from 1990 to 1999, although the state still has one of the nation's lowest consumption rates. - Sales of Adderall, a new longer-lasting ADHD drug, rose from $9 million in 1996 to $248 million last year, part of the $756 million industry-labeled ''ADHD market.'' - The rate of prescribing Ritalin and its generic to 2- to 4-year-old children rose two- to threefold between 1991 and 1995 -- although the drug is not labeled for children under 6. Such trends alarmed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which in a 1995 report questioned the industry's role in promoting the diagnosis of ADHD in the name of profits. ''While stimulant pharmacotherapy for the treatment of ADHD in children is recognized by medical experts worldwide, no other nation prescribes stimulants in such volume to its children,'' the DEA report stated. The agency questioned the role of a nonprofit ADHD support group, Children and Adults with ADHD, or CHADD, that had touted drug treatment for ADHD while receiving $748,000 in support from Ritalin's manufacturer, then called Ciba-Geigy. CHADD acknowledges the support but said its actions were based on research showing the efficacy of drug treatment. Gene Haislip, a former DEA assistant administrator who oversaw writing of the report, said: ''No one could ever explain to me why there should suddenly be an epidemic of this disorder and why it should be limited to the United States,'' which, the DEA report found, consumes five times more methylphenidate than the rest of the world combined. THE ADHD-AS-A-"DISEASE" FRAUD ROLLS ON By Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD On May, 13, 1998, Castellanos [1] of the NIMH confessed to me: ". we have not yet met the burden of demonstrating the specific pathophysiology that we believe underlies this condition." This was one of but a few truthful statements I have extracted from the leadership of "biological"/ "drugging" psychiatry, in a decade of putting questions to them. On October 10, 2002, this same Castellanos [2] a pre-eminent ADHD researcher, (formerly of the NIMH, now of NYU, still, remarkably, on the National Professional Advisory Board of CHADD) claimed, once again-as many times in the past-- that ADHD, not Ritalin, causes atrophy-shrinkage, of the brain. Under "Context," they write: "various anatomic brain abnormalities [FB: mainly whole-brain atrophy], have been reported for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with varying methods, small samples, cross-sectional designs, and without accounting for stimulant drug exposure [FB: Ritalin and amphetamines]. The phrase, "Without accounting for stimulant drug exposure," refers to the fact that in all previous studies from that of Nasrallah [3], 1986 to the present, the ADHD subjects had been "treated", i.e., exposed to Ritalin or amphetamines, meaning the drugs were probably causing the brain atrophy/shrinkage. I say probably, because such drugs are known to be brain- and body-toxic, and because until the present Castellanos study, there has been no confirmation of ADHD as a disease/physical abnormality. For more "context" regarding ADHD brain scan research, let us return to 1986 and Nasrallah, et al [3], who reported: "24 young males treated [FB: Ritalin/stimulant therapy], and followed up for hyperactivity since childhood, as adults (mean age 23.2 years), had a significantly greater frequency of cerebral (brain) atrophy." They concluded: "The possible associations of hyperactivity [FB: now called ADHD] or perhaps stimulant drug treatment to atrophic brain changes are discussed." Hynd, et al [4] (1991), using MRI, compared ADHD children "judged to be favorable responders to Ritalin (treated), and controls. The corpus callosum (the large bundle of nerve fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres), was found to be smaller in the ADHD group and was said to be due to ADHD. No mention was made of the possibility that the atrophy of the corpus callosum might be due to Ritalin. Giedd, et al. [5] (1994), using MRI, found smaller corpus callosum in hyperactive boys than in normal controls and attributed it to their ADHD. Castellanos [6] (1994), wrote: "Thirty-nine of the 50 patients had been previously treated with psychostimulants, and all patients participated in a 12 week double-blind trial of methylphenidate, d-amphetamine, and placebo, which is described elsewhere." "The normal pattern of slight but significantly greater right caudate volume across all ages was not seen in ADHD." "Total brain volume was 5% smaller in the ADHD boys." The majority of these patients were treated either with methylphenidate (Ritalin) or d-amphetamine (Dexedrine). Lyoo, et al, [7] (1996), studied 45 males and 6 females (51 total) with ADHD, and 28 controls (normals). Those with ADHD had significantly larger posterior lateral ventricles [FB: when brain tissue atrophies/shrinks, the ventricles, filled with spinal fluid, enlarge, taking up the space vacated by brain tissue]. A number of those in the ADHD group had co-existent conduct disorder [FB: like ADHD, never yet proved to be a disease/physical abnormality]. The majority on stimulants (treated). Castellanos et al [8] (1996), took magnetic resonance images (scans), of the brains of 57 boys 5-18 years of age said to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and of 55 "healthy" age-matched controls. Those in the ADHD group were found to have significantly smaller, atrophic brains [FB: referring to the whole of the brain; cerebrum and cerebellum], relative to the "healthy"controls, and the loss at many sites, of right more than left asymmetry (where right-sided structures are normally larger than that on the left). Under "Results," in the abstract of the article, we read: "Subjects with ADHD had a 4.7 % total cerebral volume." Under "Conclusion:" the part most often read, they state, unambiguously: "This first comprehensive morphometric analysis is consistent with hypothesized dysfunction of right-sided prefrontal-striatal system in ADHD. [FB: don't let the big words get in the way, they are saying the whole brain atrophy/shrinkage is due to ADHD, and would have you believe is THE proof that ADHD is a disease. However, if you failed to read this article thoroughly/carefully, you would have missed on the next to last page under "Comments": "Because almost all (93%), subjects with ADHD had been exposed to stimulants, we cannot be certain that our results are not drug related." This comes as a shocker for the reason that the Ritalin/amphetamine group of stimulants have long been known to be brain- and body-poisons. Importantly, for future reference, they go on to say: "A replication study with stimulant-naEe boys with ADHD is under way" If the this was the first "proof" that ADHD is an actual disease with confirmatory, characteristic abnormalities of the brain, what proof were Castellanos and his NIMH colleagues referring to when, in NIH Publication 94-3572 "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - Decade of the Brain" (1994), with "Scientific information and review (was) provided by NIMH staff members (Castellanos, included)." in which they refer to ADHD as "the disease" (page 7)? In 1997 Filipek, et al [9], undertook volumetric MRI analysis "To test by MRI.the a priori hypotheses that developmental anomalies exist in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in left caudate and right prefrontal frontal/ and or/ posterior parietal hemispheric regions in accord with neurochemical, neuronal circuitry and attentional framework hypotheses, and prior imaging studies." "All subjects with ADHD had been placed on medication for at least 6 months prior to the study and were felt to be responding favorably at the time of the MRI." Five of the subjects had not previously responded to methylphenidate or dextroamphetamine, but responded to non-stimulant medication. Nonetheless, Filipek et al, concludes: "This study is the first to report localized hemispheric structural anomalies in ADHD." Berquin , et al. [10] (1998) undertook an MRI study of the cerebellum in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. In 46 boys with ADHD, vermal (vermis or the cerebellum), volume was significantly less than in the 47 matched controls. From 'methods' we read, 'The 46. boys with ADHD were recruited for a drug-treatment study and were included in a prior report". The DSM-III-R 1987 was used for diagnosis herein. They commented on the association of cerebellar atrophy with alcohol and acknowledged they could not fully rule out fetal alcohol exposure. Making mention of alcohol exposure as a possible contributor to cerebellar atrophy, and acknowledging that all of their patients (number = 46), were recruited from among the 57 subjects in the study of Castellanos, et al (1996), 93% of whom had been on stimulant therapy, Berquin, et al, made no mention, as did Castellanos, of the fact that "Because almost all (93%) subjects with ADHD had been exposed to stimulants, we cannot be certain that our results are not drug related." Clearly the cerebellar atrophy described in this study could have been, and probably was, stimulant-induced. Mostofsky [11] (1999): Brain abnormality linked to ADHD, April 20, 99 (Reuters Health) -- Compared with other children of the same age, children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have smaller brain volumes, particularly smaller amounts of gray matter in the right frontal area of their brains, "There is a lot of evidence that the brain's right hemisphere is dominant in attentional processes," said study author and neurologist Stewart Mostofsky, MD, of the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. "Abnormalities in the brain's right frontal structure and function may be contributing to the behavioral impairments associated with ADHD." Along with less right frontal gray matter, there searchers also found that ADHD patients had smaller volumes of left frontal gray matter as well as right and left frontal white matter when compared to children without ADHD. The study included 12 boys diagnosed with ADHD and 14 boys without ADHD. All boys were between the ages of seven and 13. Nothing was said of drug status in the press release. I have had no answer to my letter of inquiry to Mostofsky. I have since learned--in fact, Castellanos assures us in his January, 2000, Reader's Digest interview--that this research, too, dealt with "treated" subjects [FB: and it has since, been published]. Semrud-Clikeman M, et al [12] (2000). Under "METHOD, subjects," writes: "The volumetric MRI measures from these subjects, who were participants in a larger study, have been reported previously by Filipek et al (1997). Ten children with ADD/H from the previous study and 11 normal controls were selected." "Volumetric" means structural, anatomic, morphological. By repeat reading of this manuscript I get the impression that the ADD/H subjects were scanned for the 1997 study and not since. Dates of the MRI and of psychometric tests are not given. This means that all 10 of the ADD/H subjects (just the Ritalin responders), herein were subjects in the previous Filipek (1997) study. This study's purpose is to correlate previous MRI scan findings to current (or whenever) psychometric "neuropsychological" tests (not merely to do MRI scans on ADHD subjects). And yet I do not see specific dates of either MRIs or the psychometric tests. This study assumes these psychometric test abnormalities are part of ADD/H, at least in treatment- responding ADD/H subjects, and has as it's main intent to perform psychometric tests and correlate them with the brain changes i.e., smaller volume of the left caudate head; smaller volume of white matter of the right frontal lobe. These are pipe-dreams. In neurology, my specialty, we regularly see large, entirely asymptomatic frontal and temporal lobe tumors with no behavior changes and no IQ or other psychometric changes. We regularly see patients with dementia as in Huntington's disease, or Alzheimer's disease, with clear, disabling behavioral abnormality but normal psychometric batteries. I have seen children with clear mental retardation with false normal psychometric test results. To hope for and test for such correlations is pure pseudo-science. Semrud-Clikeman et al [12], continue: "Since structural differences varied depending on response/nonresponse to stimulant medication within the ADHD group in our previous study (Filipek,1997), participants were selected to be as homogeneous as possible on this variable (responders only), to control for a possible confounding variable." This was their excuse for eliminating ADD/H non-responders and therefore, non-exposed and not brain-damaged by the Ritalin. I suspect they know that Ritalin non-responders and therefore, Ritalin non-exposed [FB: at least not for long, as would probably be required to cause permanent change], would look like ADHD (untreated) which looks like, NORMAL! It appears they know the ADHD responders (and therefore long on the drugs), would be the only ones to have brain atrophy/changes. But do they speak of the drug being the cause of the changes? Of course not. Of children with ADHD being normal, having normal brains? Of course not. "Using DSM-III criteria (1980), we selected 10 children with ADHD (called ADD in 1980), because they were favorable responders." And because they were long exposed to the brain-toxic effects of Ritalin and would have brain atrophy on their MRI. THE ADHD CONSENSUS CONFERENCE In their joint presentation to the National Institutes of Health, Consensus Conference on ADHD, November 16-18, 1998. James Swanson, Ph.D., of the University of California at Irvine (also, remarkably of the National Professional Medical Board of CHADD) , and F. Xavier Castellanos [13] of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), among the most prominent of ADHD researchers, reviewed the Biological Bases of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Neuroanatomy, Genetic, and Pathophysiology. Who would guess, having heard their title, that there is no biological basis for ADHD? Swanson and Castellanos wrote: "One of the most important current developments has been the convergence of findings from magnetic resonance imaging studies of brain anatomy (aMRI)." What, I wonder, does 'convergence of findings' mean relative to proof? Those in "biological" psychiatry seem fond of the _expression, "convergence of findings," perhaps having to do with the fact that there are no proofs in "biological" psychiatry, just as there are no actual diseases. They continue: "We will present a meta-analysis of studies from several independent laboratories that have reported ADHD/HKD (hyperkinetic disorder, a term used in the UK), abnormalities in two specific but still coarsely defined brain regions of the frontal lobes and basal ganglia. For example, Filipek and colleagues [9], reported that a group of children with ADHD/HKD had brain volumes about 10 percent smaller than normal in anterior superior regions (posterior prefrontal, motor association, and mid-anterior cingulate, anterior inferior regions, and anterior basal ganglia), and Castellanos and colleagues [8] reported that right anterior frontal, caudate, and globus pallidus regions were about 10% smaller in an ADHD/HKD group than in a control group. "The convergence of findings within and across investigators has not emerged for functional imaging studies using positron emission tomography (PET) [FB: this is a confession, at long last, that the much publicized 1990, PET scan "breakthrough" of Zametkin et al [14], the "neurobiological" basis for ADHD for 5-10 years, was never once replicated/confirmed], as it has for aMRI studies." What the authors mean here, is that only anatomic MRI (aMRI) studies have shown abnormalities-atrophy--in ADHD subjects, relative to normal controls. Swanson, presenting at the Consensus Conference for himself, and Castellanos summarized: " Recent investigations provide converging evidence that a refined phenotype of ADHD/HKD is characterized by reduced size in specific neuroanatomical regions of the frontal lobes and basal ganglia." Nor did Swanson leave any doubt that he was claiming that the brain atrophy he had described was part and parcel of ADHD/HKD (by whatever name)-it's long-sought biological basis (ADD having been conceptualized-invented, for the DSM-III in 1980). Saying these brain abnormalities were a component of the ADHD 'phenotype,' Swanson posited that it had genetic basis-an abnormal 'genotype.' Speaking of 'phenotype' one speaks of the somatic or physical manifestation of all the genes-the genotype. Saying one has one has an abnormal 'phenotype,' one implies an abnormal gene or genes-an abnormal 'genotype' as it's cause. Baughman, an invited presenter, took the microphone and asked: "Dr. Swanson, why did you not 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?" Audience: "ooh, wow!" [And this is all captured in real-time on my video: "ADHD-Total, 100% Fraud," which I narrate and appear in, made from the official federal videotape of the Consensus Conference]. Swanson: "Well, that's a hypothesis. I don't know the exact numbers of how many were or were not on medication, and as I indicated, I understand that this is a critical issue and in fact I am planning a study to investigate that. I haven't yet done it." [FB: recall, Castellanos et al [8] having written, in 1996: "A replication study with stimulant-naEe boys with ADHD is under way." Surely if Castellanos, his co-author was doing such a study, Swanson would know about it. Where is it? As we shall see via his Readers Digest, January, 2000 [16] interview, to come, it is nowhere to be found.]. Opening the November 16-18, 1998, NIH, Consensus Conference on ADHD, Hyman Director of the NIMH, posited: "ADHD affects from 0-3% in some school districts up to 40% in others. this cannot be right." 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..." Degrandpre, commenting on the Report of the Panel, 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." Failing to prove that ADHD is a disease, they seek to re-define the word 'disease'. Baughman testified: "Without an iota of proof . the NIMH proclaims the . children "brain-diseased," "abnormal." CHADD, funded by Ciba-Geigy, . 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." Given Carey's testimony, that ADHD appears to be "a set of normal behavioral variations...", and my exposing the fact that virtually all of the ADHD brain scan literature dealt with subjects, on chronic Ritalin/amphetamine "treatment," the final statement of Consensus Conference 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." I specify "final statement of Consensus Conference Panel of November 18, 1998," because, believe it or not, there was another one to come; another "final statement." This wording (above), which appeared for an indeterminate time on the NIH web site, was subsequently removed and replaced with wording claiming 'validity' for ADHD. Myself, and a number of colleagues who had been at the press conference when the "final statement" was passed out, wrote to conference organizers, and got no satisfactory explanation. Just who made this alteration remains unknown. In a Readers Digest interview in January, 2000 [15], it was first claimed, "Castellanos and his group found three areas of the brain to be "significantly smaller in ADHD kids than in normal children. A series of studies also found that the greater the shrinkage, the worse the ADHD symptoms appear to be. According to Dr. Jay Giedd, an associate of Castellanos, this suggests that ASDHD may arise from abnormalities in these parts of the brain. Some critics claim that such brain differences in ADHD children might actually be caused by Ritalin - meaning these smaller areas of the brain could be the result of the stimulant treatment. To address this, Castellanos has now embarked on another study, imaging the brains of ADHD youngsters who have not been treated with drugs." Which study is that? The one of drug-naEe boys he said he was doing in 1996 or does this refer to the study just published in JAMA, October 10, 2002? Here again Castellanos cites the need to do a study of subjects never exposed to psychiatric drugs, all of which are brain-, body-toxins; why then in his current study has he co-mingled the ADHD subjects who have been treated/exposed (68%), with the few never-treated, never exposed (32%), thus necessitating so such statistical "massaging" to arrive at the desired conclusion: always, in biological psychiatry, that the disorder is as disease needing, requiring treatment, and that the drug(s) are never addictive, dangerous or deadly, and that, most of all, it never causes the brain to shrivel. In order to know if the brains of children with an ADHD diagnosis are equal to those of normals or atrophic, all that needs to be done is to compare the brain scans of normals with those of ADHD-diagnosed children, never, ever exposed to psychiatric drugs. It is as if they were afraid to do such a study, afraid the children with this non-disease, might just have normal healthy brains, and then of course Big Pharma, Novartis in particular, would be mad at them because that would mean the atrophic, shrunken, shriveled brains had been due to Ritalin all along. It is almost as if they knew the drugs were doing it (atrophying, shrinking, shriveling the brains), and planned to represent/report it to medicine and to the public and parents and children as proof of this terrible disorder/disease/syndrome/epidemic/plague/concoction. Actually, the answer to the AD/HD "disease"/ "no disease" question was delivered by Swanson himself, March 7, 1998, in an address to he American Society of Adolescent Psychiatry, in San Diego (I was there). He confessed:"I would like to have an objective diagnosis for the disorder (ADHD). Right now psychiatric diagnosis is completely subjective.We would like to have biological tests-a dream of psychiatry for many years." Swanson's saying this means there is no such thing as an actual disease/physical abnormality in all of psychiatry; means the brain atrophy in all of the studies, from that of Nasrallah, et al, in 1986, up to and including that of Castellanos, et al, in JAMA, October, 10, 2002 could only be due to their Ritalin/amphetamine therapy; and means that every physical consequence/side effect, of every psychiatric "disease" can only be due to drugs/treatments themselves-there being no such thing as an actual, real, genuine, bona fide, psychiatric disease. Swanson's saying this also means that the 6 million children in the US with ADHD, were entirely normal until the moment their Ritalin/amphetamine "treatment" was begun. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1.. Castellanos, FX. Personal correspondence to F.Baughman of May, 13, 1998. 2. Castellanos, et al. Developmental Trajectories of Brain Volume Abnormalities in Children and Adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. JAMA, 2002;288: 1740-1748. 3.. Giedd, J.N., et.al., American Journal of Psychiatry 1994;151:665) 4.. Nasrallah H, et al [1986] Cortical atrophy in young adults with a history of hyperactivity in childhood. Psychiatric Research, 1986;17:241-246. 5.. Hynd GW, Semrud-Clikeman M, Lorys AR , Novey ES, Eliopulos D & Lyytenen, H. Corpus callosum morphoilogy in attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder: Morphometric analysis of MRI. J of Learning Disabilities, 24 (3), 141-146) 6.. Castellanos FX, et al. Quantitive Morphology of the Caudate Nucleus in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Am J Psychiatry 1994; 151:1791-1796. 7.. Lyoo, et al. The corpus callosum an lateral ventricles in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a brain MRI study. Biological Psychiatry. 1996;40:1060-1063.) 8.. Castellanos et al. Quantitative brain magnetic resonance imaging in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry. 1996;53:607-616. 9.. Filipek et al. 1997 Volumetric MRI analysis comparing subjects having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with normal controls. Neurology 1997;48:589-601. 10.. Berquin PC, et al. Cerebellum in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A morphometric MRI study. Neurology 1998;50:1087-1093. 11.. Mostofsky S. Brain abnormality linked to ADHD, April 20, 1999 (Reuters Health) l.. Semrud-Clikeman M, et al. Notes on Using MRI to Examine Brain-Behavior Relationships in Males with Attention Deficit Disorder With Hyperactivity. Semrud-Clikeman M, et al. J. Am Acad Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 2000, 39 (4):477-484. 13.. Swanson J, Castellanos FX. Biological Basises of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Invited presentation at the NIH, Consensus Development Conference on ADHD, November 16-18, 1998. 14.. Zametkin AJ, et al. Cerebral Glucose Metabolism in Adults with Hyperactivity of Childhood Onset. N Engl. J. Med. 1990;323:1361-6. 15.. John Pekkanen. Making Sense of Ritalin (interview with FX Castellanos). Readers Digest, January, 2000:159-168. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FROM DR. PETER R. BREGGIN, MD How do you respond to the parents who give glowing testimonies about how that drug has helped their child? In America today, it's easy to go out and get glowing testimony from parents about how wonderfully their children have been doing on Ritalin. There was a caged animal, a polar bear, in the zoo in Toronto, who was pacing up and down and looking uncomfortable, and looking like he'd really like to go back to the Arctic or the Antarctic. And they put him on Prozac, and he stopped pacing. His name was Snowball. He sat quietly and looked happy. And animal rights people gathered to the zoo and protested the drugging of a polar bear to make him into a good caged animal, and he was taken off the drug. We have lost track of what childhood is about, of what parenthood and teaching is about. We now think it's about having good quiet children who make it easy for us to go to work. It's about having submissive children who will sit in a boring classroom of 30, often with teachers who don't know how to use visual aids and all the other exciting technologies that kids are used to. Or there are teachers who are forced to pressure their children to get grades on standardized tests, and don't have the time to pay individual attention to them. We're in a situation in America in which the personal growth and development and happiness of our children is not the priority; it's rather the smooth functioning of overstressed families and schools. . . . There are no miracle drugs. Speed--these drugs are forms of speed--don't improve human life. They reduce human life. And if you want less of a child, these drugs are very effective. These parents have also been lied to: flat-out lied to. They've been told that children have a neurobiological disorder. They've been told their children have biochemical imbalances and genetic defects. On what basis? That they fit into a checklist of attention deficit disorder, which is just a list of behaviors that teachers would like to see stopped in a classroom? That's all it is. . . . One of the really obscene things that has happened is that psychiatry has sold the idea that if you criticize drugs, you're making parents feel guilty. What an obscenity that is. We are supposed to be responsible for our children. . . . If we're not responsible for raising our children, what are we responsible for? If children aren't entrusted to us for the specific purpose of our turning ourselves inside-out to be good parents, what is life about? It is a disgrace that my profession has pandered to the guilt of parents by saying, "We'll relieve you of guilt. We'll tell you your child has a brain disease, and that the problem can be treated by a drug." That's pandering to the worst desires that we have as parents--all of us--which is to say, "I'm not guilty of this problem." . . . I'd rather be guilty as a parent, and say, "I did wrong," than say, "Son, you have a brain disease." Sure, we're all tempted. We're all tempted, when we're in conflict with our children, to hold them responsible. And how much easier it is if we don't even have to hold them responsible. . . . |
