[SSRI-Research] THE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN LABELED ADHD (OR ANY PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER) WERE NORMAL ALL ALONG

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Wed, 30 Jun 2004 21:27:59 -0700 (PDT)

[sSRI-Research] THE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN LABELED ADHD (OR ANY

PSYCHIATRIC " DISORDER " ) WERE NORMAL ALL ALONG

 

THE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN LABELED ADHD (OR ANY PSYCHIATRIC " DISORDER " ) WERE

NORMAL ALL ALONG

 

by

 

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

fredbaughmanmd

www.adhdfraud.com

(a life-long, independent, neurologist/child neurologist)

 

 

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.

 

BIRTH OF SCIENTIFICALLY-BASED MEDICINE

 

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.

 

BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON SUBJECTIVE, SYMPTOM COMPLEXES

 

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.

 

GENETICS CLAIMS

 

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.

 

 

 

PAM UNDERSTANDS THE FRAUD OF BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY

 

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. "

 

 

 

THEY CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE ATROPHY AND CALL IT ADHD

 

 

 

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.

 

SWANSON & CASTELLANOS SEEK TO PROVE ADHD A DISEASE

 

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. "

 

CASTELLANOS 2002 STILL REFUSING TO STUDY ADHD-UNMEDICATED

 

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.

 

LYING TO PATIENTS--THE NEW STANDARD OF PRACTICE

 

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.