The study is of the higher percentage of pesticides in urine of kids who have been diagnosed with the label. If it was purely an issue of the label being too liberally applied, there should be no marked variation in the label among the population in question. Additionally, most children may be exposed to pesticides, but the study is saying that there is more pesticides in the urine of some than others.
I am all for accepting this study's conclusion skeptically, but I don't see how starting from skepticism of the ADHD label gets you to disregard the observation that *variations* in that label correlate to apparent *variations* in pesticide exposure. Unless pesticide levels in their urine are also somehow subjective (i.e. their kidneys are just ADHD as well?)
I also don't see who this helps in terms of politics and administration--unless the technocratic capitalist answer to the problem is: if you can't afford to eat organic, you should buy your kids Ritalin. In that case, it is hardly a problem of the study itself, but the perverted logic which interprets its findings.
s
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 09:12, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> [WS:] To play a devil's advocate, does not this correlations between
> pesticides and ADHD have something to do with the rather liberal application
> of the ADHD label? I mean, most children are exposed to pesticides, so the
> more of them are also labeled ADHD, the gretaer the correlation between the
> two - by definition.
>
> I understand that ADHD has a neurobiological basis, but finding that
> requires rather extensive and expensive testing, so many diagnoses are based
> on subjective evaluations of the behavior - and for political and
> administrative reasons the ADHD label is applied rather liberally.
>
> Wojtek
>