I don't know. I think we should give the opponents of psychiatric drugging of children some consideration, since ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) has never been proven to be a bona fide psycho-physiological syndrome. It is diagnosed chiefly on the basis of behavior, and supposedly "proven" by brain catscans (like trying to take an abstract expressionist painting to be evidence that the artist is schizophrenic, if you ask me).
http://www.adhdfraud.org/index.htm http://www.adhdfraud.org/ritalin_is_poison.htm
Something that makes me suspicious is that I went to public school in the era before ADD and I do not remember there being much if any special drug treatment needed for children. A few of them may have been "hyper," or had "behavior problems," and some of them no doubt weren't paying as close attention to lessons as they should have been, but none of that would have been considered outside the range of normal human behavior and requiring medication.
It is quite possible for some "legitimate" medical practitioners to be nearly as "quackish" as "alterna-quacks" when their ability to make money is at stake. (I put in an annecdote below.)
People sometimes fool themselves, too. If diagnosing ADD justifies their practice, doctors may come to believe that such a thing as ADD exists.
There is nothing NECESSARILY pure about doctors, although I generally respect them. (I actually had a number of medical student roommates when I was in graduate school and could not find anything to disrespect about THEIR motives.)
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I don't rule out the issue of medical psychiatric abuse. The L.A. Weekly had a long article last year about a young boy in the department of child services system who was subjected to massive drug treatment for psychiatric problems that didn't seem initially very startling, if I remember. He was degenerating rapidly, and there was little that his relatives (mother wasn't around or something and he was entirely in county care) could do about it. Massive medication was being used as a means of "managing" his case. Rather scary.
************
A little annecdote about a doctor. I had a bad flu with chest congestion and went to a medical plan doctor (one of the few times I had any medical insurance). I figured I might need some antibiotics. The doctor shunted me off for a chest x-ray to a nearby clinic. I found out later that he was a partner in the x-ray business, that the x-ray was not covered by the medical plan, and later I figured that this was his way to make up for what he considered the inadequate fees that he would have got for a simple office visit with a prescription for antibiotics. I guess he had to pay for the rental space at the airport for his private plane. His office was full of aviating pictures.
*******
I began to wonder about the study of children who have been in daycare that indicated that they tended to exhibit more minor "behavior problems" than other children. Now there might be a quite obvious explanation for that. As a result of going to daycare and not staying home entirely with their mothers, the kids may have already been socially smarter than other kids and thus a little more inclined to "test limits." Some "misbehavior" can often be a sign of intelligence. It doesn't always take much intelligence to do what you're told. But it does take some intelligence to figure out what people are expecting and to violate those expectations in a way that doesn't get one into a LOT of trouble. None of the journalists that I read seemed to make that argument. Perhaps they never raised kids.
I'll give you an example, as another aside for the thread that Wotjek and Martha are on. N. (my ex's kid, not originally mine) didn't want to clean up her messy bedroom before going out to play. So she began throwing tantrums and screaming while I was trying to read in the living room. This was occasional, not normal behavior. When she got it into her six-year-old head that she wanted to do it, one of her lines was, "I want what I want." I raised my voice, but she wouldn't stop. She was screaming in a graduate student apartment where all the neighbors could hear (which she no doubt knew). So I left the second floor apartment and stood below her bedroom window and began yelling up, "Child abuse! Child abuse!" (as in "this child is abusing me"). Things got quiet, then her little head popped into the window with a look that said, "I can't believe that he's doing that!"
If you don't want to beat them, you have to outsmart them.
Eventually she got over the behavior, of course.
Peter
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 12:38:04 -0700
> I could as I do on occasion in my conspianoia mode be jumping to
>conclusions here, but is that group a Scientology front? ADHD>Ritalin and
>anti-Prozac agit prop from there, the Eagle Forum of Phyllis Schlafley and
>Dr. Peter Breggin. Though the overuse of ritalin to rein in boys who are
>being boys does concern me and other pwoggies not just quacks like Breggin
>and the Xtian Right.
>www.google.com/search?q=Citizens+for+Responsible+Care+%26+Research+Vera+Hass
>ner+Sharav&sa=Search&cat=gwd%2FTop%2FSociety%2FIssues%2FConspiracy
>Michael Pugliese
>
>