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Assessing substance use disorders (SUD), in ADHD in 56 medicated, and 19 (nineteen) non-medicated, subjects,
Biederman, et al [30], conclude (1) that untreated ADHD (a non-disease) was a risk factor for SUD in adolescence, and (2) that treatment with psychostimulants was associated with an 85% reduction in risk for
SUD in ADHD youth.
They would have us believe that the greater the number of ADHD patients who take their Schedule II, controlled, methylphenidate/amphetamine, “appropriately,” and, “as prescribed,” the fewer who will develop
SUD.
Those who favor this view regularly site
Biederman, et al [30], while failing to site Lambert [29] .
Opposing: “the risk of promoting substance abuse is underestimated.” Psychiatry: “wrong, treatment with stimulants by contrast may decrease the risk for later substance-abuse. Baughman: Here again, we have not just a denial of the truth--a statement that the Schedule II, psychostimulants are not addictive—but an inversion of the truth, a claim that “treatment” with these substances of addiction for a disease that does not exist, will result in less addiction—‘substance use
disorder’—than would result were there no such “treatment.”
This is the view promulgated by Biederman et al [30] with follow-up of just 19 (nineteen) non-medicated ADHD subjects.
This same view, always citing the Biederman study, is championed by none other than Alan I.
Leshner, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), just as he pushes ADHD (the non-disease) itself, as a disease/physical variable which predisposes to addiction (just as obesity
predisposes to diabetes).
The burden of proof always lies with those who say an abnormality/disease is present; with those who would start treatment without having first demonstrated the abnormality/disease.
In diabetes we do not inject insulin before having proven the blood sugar is low, and exactly how low.
We do not remove the amino acid phenylalanine from the diet of the newborn without having proved they have the real chemical imbalance—phenylketonuria
(PKU).
The burden of proof never rests with the questioning parents or patients, or their advocates who say “show me proof of the abnormality; proof of the disease.”
It always resides with those who say an abnormality/disease is present that must be treated, and before treatment is begun A young father-of-divorce, a podiatrist, was meeting his son’s psychiatrist for the first time.
He asked the psychiatrist why his son was on Ritalin.
The psychiatrist responded, “that’s because he has a ‘chemical imbalance of the brain.’
To that, the father responded: ‘Please show me the laboratory results.’
The psychiatrist, immediately uncomfortable, managed: ‘Those charts are filed away…I can’t get to them just now.’
But the father persisted in his demands to see confirmatory laboratory tests.
To this, the psychiatrist became increasingly flustered, finally ‘losing it,’ banishing father and son from his office—permanently.
Exposing the fraud was that simple.
(end of table) Buitelaar and Bergsma, 34;5: “…it is certainly untrue that the diagnostic criteria apply to almost any normal active child.”
To this Carey [24] responds: “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 (ADHD) in doubt.” Buitelaar and Bergsma, 36;2: “For child psychiatry the question of whether or not ADHD is a disease, cannot be answered for certain, but this should not be an obstruction.
The answer is simply not that important.”
It is absolutely unbelieveable that they—psychiatry--would say such a thing and at the same time press ADHD, and all psychiatric conditions/diagnoses, upon troubled, but normal ,children and adults as a diseases, with no purpose in mind other than to make ‘medical patients’ of them and drug them, throughout
their life-span.
Consider the July 15, 1996, statement from influential, US Congressman, Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut:
“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...” We, in the US, have said one thing and done the opposite.
Nor would it have been possible, in the US, without the federal government legitimizing, in law, that which science and medicine cannot possibly validate.
To what extent do we legitimize ADHD? Consider this, from Clinical Psychiatric News [35].
“Approximately 2.1 - 4.1 million children, aged 9-17 years have a serious mental or emotional disorder.
Last year, 23% of parents of children with behavioral disorders were told that they needed to relinquish custody to obtain intensive mental health services for their children; 20% actually gave up custody.” This--as if they had severe diabetes, otherwise fatal heart disease, or tuberculosis, and would die without treatment which they had to be sent away for.
But as we know not a single psychiatric condition/diagnosis is an actual disease; not a single one has an essential form of medical treatment, much less one that needs to be court-ordered and enforced.
Buitelaar and Bergsma, 36;3: “Nowadays, child psychiatrists would say that the children are suffering from a neurobiological disorder and that punishment is not nearly as effective as treatment with medication.” Clearly, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has also adopted the ‘making-patients-of-normal-children’ brand of ‘mental health.’
In the May, 2001 issue of PEDIATRICS, the journal of the
AAP, Baughman [36] wrote:
“Clinical Practice Guideline (of the
AAP) 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. … 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.” No one from the AAP responded, not even it’s president, Steven Berman, MD, to whom I wrote separately, of this stark medical/scientific deception.
Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit Disorders—CHADD, is the nation’s largest ‘disease’ support group with over 600 chapters and
28,000 members nationwide.
CHADD sponsors parent support groups, convenes meetings—both local and national, and works closely with schools, nationwide.
CHADD calls ADHD a ‘neurobiological disorder;’ an abnormality/disease within the child/person.
And they do so with their professional advisory board dominated, through the years, by researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health, who know, full-well, that no ‘neurological’ or ‘biological’ abnormality has ever been found in children/persons, diagnosed by DSM-IV or any
other criteria, as having ADHD.
Further, Ciba-Geigy, manufacturer of Ritalin contributed $748,000 to CHADD in the 1991-1994 period alone.
They continue to garner financial support from virtually all who manufacture drugs prescribed for the invented disease—ADHD—without which there would be nothing to prescribe them for.
In 1995, the DEA [28] reported: “A recent communication from the
UN-INCB, expressed concern about non-governmental organizations and parental associations in the United States that are actively lobbying for the medical use of methylphenidate for children with ADHD.
The INCB further stated that ‘financial transfer from a pharmaceutical company with the purpose to promote sales of an internationally controlled substance would be identified as hidden advertisement and in contradiction with the provisions of the 1971 Convention (Article 10, para 3).’” The only bona fide neurological disease for which Schedule II, psychostimulants can legally be prescribed is narcolepsy, which accounts for no more than a fraction of one percent of all such prescriptions.
The remaining 99-plus percent is prescribed, for US schoolchildren, for the fraudulent, invented, ‘disease’--ADHD.
In the November 10, 2001, San Diego Union-Tribune, a parent wrote to psychologist/columnist, John Rosemond: “This is my son’s first year in a new, private school.
Already, his third-grade teacher has suggested that we have him tested for attention deficit disorder.
I discovered that 65 (sixty-five) percent of the kids in the fifth grade at his school have been diagnosed with ADD and are taking medication.”
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