Message: 2
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 11:10:46 EST
From: PatAspray@aol.com
Subject: Re: QUEST: ADD - Does it Exist? An Investigative Reporter's
View - With FACTS!
ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER: DOES IT EXIST?
Many parents around the country have discovered that Ritalin-taking
has
become a condition for their children continuing in school. There
are even
reports by parents of threats from social agencies: "If
you don't allow us
to
prescribe Ritalin for your ADD child, we may decide that you
are an unfit
parent. We may decide to take your child away."
This mind-boggling state of affairs is fuelled by teachers, principals
and
school counsellors, who do not have medical training.
Yet the very definition of the illness for which Ritalin would
be prescribed
is in doubt, especially at the highest levels of the medical
profession.
This
doubt, however, has not filtered down to most public schools.
Commenting on Dr Lawrence Diller's book, Running on Ritalin, Dr
William
Carey, Director of Behavioral Pediatrics at the ChiIdren's Hospital
of
Philadelphia, has written: "Dr Diller has correctly descibed
the disturbing
trend of blaming children's social, behavioral and academic performance
problems entirely on an unproven brain deficit...
On November 16-I8, 1998, the US National Institute of Mental Health
held the
prestigious NIH Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis
and Treatment
of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The conference was
explicitly
aimed at ending all debate about the diagnoses of ADD and ADHD
and about the
prescription of Ritalin. It was hoped that at the highest levels
of medical
research and bureaucracy, a clear position would be taken: this
is what ADHD
is, this is where it comes from, and these are the drugs it should
be
treated
with. That didn't happen, amazingly. Instead, the official panel
responsible
for drawing conclusions from the conference threw cold water
on the whole
attempt to reach a comfortable consensus.
Panel member Mark Vonnegut, a Massachusetts peadiatrician, said:
"The
diagnosis [of ADHD] is a mess."
The panel essentially said it sure ADHD was even a "valid" diagnosis.
In
other words, ADD and ADHD might be nothing more than attempts
to categorize
certain children's behaviours with no organic cause, no clear-cut
biological
basis, no provable reason for even using the ADD or ADHD labels.
The panel
found "no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction
[which
malfunction had been the whole psychiatric assumption in the
first place]".
The panel
also found that Ritalin has not been shown to have long-term
benefits. In fact, it stated that Ritalin has resulted in "little
improvement
on academic achievement or social skills".
Panel chairman David Kupfer, Professor of Psychiatry at the University
of
Pittsburgh said: "There is no current validated diagnostic test
[for ADHD]."
Yet at every level of public education in America1 there remains
what can
only be called a voracious desire to give children Ritalin (or
other similar
drugs) for ADD or ADHD.
Nullifying the warnings, assurances and prescriptions that doctors
routinely
give to parents of children who have been diagnosed with ADD
or ADHD should
be a national goal.
The 1994 Textbook of Psydriatry. published by the American Psychiatric
Press,
contains this review by Popper and Steingard. The pronouncement
makes a
number of things clear. "Stimulants [such as Ritalin] do not
produce lasting
improvements In aggressivity, conduct disorder, criminality,
education
achievement, job functioning, marital relationships or long-term
adjustment".
Parents should also wake up to the fact that, in the aftermath
of the
Littleton, Colorado, tragedy, pundits and doctors are urging
more extensive
"mental health" services for children. Fine, except whether you
have noticed
it or not, for the most part this no longer means therapy with
a caring
professional. It means drugs. It means the drugs I am discussing
in this
inquiry.
In December 1996, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
held a
conference On ADHD and Ritalin. Surprisingly, it issued a sensible
statement
about drugs being a bad substitute for the presence of caring
parents: "...
the use of stimulants [such as Ritalin] for the short-term improvement
of
behavior and underachievement may be thwarting efforts to address
the
children's real issues, both on an individual and societal level.
The lack
of
long-term positive results with the use of stimulants and the
specter of
previous and potential stimulant abuse epidemics give cause to
worry about
the future. The dramatic increase in the use of methylphenidate
[Ritalin] in
the 1990s should be viewed as a marker or warning to society
about the
problems children are having and bow we view and address them.
The Brookhaven National Laboratory has studied Ritalin through
PET brain
scans. Lab researchers have found that the drug decreased the
flow of blood
to all parts of the brain by 20 to 30 per cent. That is, of course,
a very
negative finding. It is a signal of danger. But parents, teachers,
counsellors, principals, school psychologists know nothing about
this. Nor
do
they know that cocaine produces the same blood-flow effect.
In his book, Talking Back to Ritalin, Peter Breggin expands on
the drug's
effects: "Stimulants such as Ritalin and amphetamine...have grossly
harmful
impacts on the brain-reducing overall blood flow, disturbing
glucose
metabolism and possibly causing permanent shrinkage or atrophy
of the
brain."
UNSETTLED OUT OF COURT
In the wake of the Littleton shooting, we find that "the American
people"
and
lawyers pundits and child psychologists are pointing the finger
at
Hollywood,
at video games like Doom, at inattentive parents, and at the
availability of
guns. We have to wonder why almost no one is calling out these
drugs. Is it
possible that the work of PR people is shaping the national response?
An instructive article, "Protecting
Prozac", by Michael Grinfeld in the
December 1998 California Laywer, opens several doors. Grinfeld
notes that
"in
the past year, nearly a dozen mg Prozac have disappeared from
the court
record". He is talking about lawsuits against the manufacturer,
Eli Lilly,
and he is saying that these cases have apparently been settled,
without
trial, in such a quiet and final way, with such strict confidentiality
that
it Is almost as if they never happened.
This smoothness, this invisibility, keeps the Press away and ...
unknown to
the public, there has been "a long-term, unpublicised relationship
between
the company that makes the most widely known ADD medication [Ritalin]
and
the
nation's largest ADD support group".
also, most importantly, does not encourage other people to come
out of the
woodwork with lawyers and Prozac horror-stories of their own,
because they
are not reading about $2 million or $10 million or $50 million
settlements
paid out by Lilly.
Grinfeld details a set of manocuvres involving attorney Paul
Smith who, in
the early 1990s1 became the lead plaintiffs counsel in the famous
Fentress
case against Eli Lilly. The case made the accusation that Prozac
had induced
murder. This was the first action involving Prozac to reach a
trial and
jury,
so it would establish a major precedent for a large number of
other pending
suits against the manufacturer. After what many people thought
was a very
weak attack on Lilly by Smith, the jury came back in five hours
with an easy
verdict favouring Lilly and Prozac.
Grinfeld writes: "Lilly's defense attorneys predicied the verdict
would be
the death knell for [anti-]Prozac litigation."
But that wasn't the end of the Fentress case, even though Smith,
to the
surprise of many, didn't appeal.
Rumors began to circulate that Smith had made several [prior]
oral
agreements
with Lilly concerning the evidence that would be presented [in
Fentress],
the
structure of a postverdict settlement, and the potential resolution
of
Smith's other [anti-Prozac] cases. "
In other words, the rumours said: This lawyer made a deal with
Lilly to
present a weak attack, to omit evidence damaging to Prozac, so
that the jury
would find Lilly innocent of all charges. In return for this,
the case would
be settled secretly, with Lilly paying out monies to Smith's
client. In this
way, Lilly would avoid the exposure of a public settlement, and
through the
innocent verdict would discourage other potential plaintiffs
from suing it
over Prozac.
The rumours congealed. The Fentress case Judge, John Potter, asked
lawyers
on
both sides if changed hands". He wanted to know if the fix was
in. The
lawyers said no money had been paid, "without acknowledging that
an
agreement
was in place".
Judge Potter didn't stop there. In April 1995, Grinfeld noted:
"In court
papers, Potter wrote that he was surprised that the plaintiff's
attorneys
[Smith) hadn't introduced evidence that Lilly had been charged
criminally
for
failing to report deaths from another of its drugs to the Food
and Drug
Administration. Smith had fought hard [during the Fentress trial]
to
convince
Potter to admit that evidence, and then unaccountably withheld
it".
In Judge Potter's motion, he alleged that "Lilly [in the Fentress
case]
sought to buy not just the verdict, but the court's judgement
as well".
In 1996, the Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion on all ...there
was a
serious lack of candor with the trial court [during Fentress]
and there may
have been deception, bad faith conduct, abuse of the judicial
process or
perhaps even fraud."
After the Supreme Court remanded the Fentress case back to the
state
Attorney-General's office, the whole matter dribbled away, and
then
resurfaced in a different form in another venue. At the time
of the
California Lawyer article, a new action against Smith was unresolved.
If Eli Lilly went to extreme lengths to control suits against
Prozac, it
stands to reason that drug companies could also try to deflect
legal actions
by influencing how the Press, lawyers and public view these school
shootings.
For example, accusing video games is acceptable, accusing guns
is
acceptable,
accusing bad parents is acceptable. In fact, these causes, as
I stated
above,
are legitimate.
INDUSTRY-FUNDED GROUPS PUSH DRUGS
In 1996, the PBS television series, The Merrow Report, produced
a program
called ('Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis?" The
Educational
Writers Association awarded the program first prize for investigative
reporting in that year. I can recall no other piece of television
journalism
since the Vietnam War which has managed to capture, on film,
government
officials in the act of realizing that they have made serious
mistakes.
John Merrow, the series host, explains that, unknown to the public,
there
has
been "a long-term, unpublicised financial relationship between
the company
that makes the most widely known ADD medication [Ritalin] and
the nation's
largest ADD support group." The group is CHADD, based in Florida.
CHADD stands
for Children and Adults with ADD. Its 650 local chapters
sponsor regional conferences and monthly meetings, often held at schools.
It
educates thousands of families about ADD and ADHD and gives out free
medical advice.
This advice features the drug Ritalin.
Since 1988, when CHADD and Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis), the manufacturer
of
Ritalin, began their financial relationship, Ciba-Geigy has given
almost a
million dollars to CHADD helping it to expand its membership
from 800 to
35,000 people.
Merrow interviews several parents whose children are on Ritalin-parents
who
have been relying on CHADD for information. They are clearly
taken aback
when
they learn that CHADD obtains a significant amount of its funding
from the
drug company that makes Ritalin.
CHADD has used Ciba-Geigy money to promote its pharmaceutical
message
through
a public service announcement produced for television. Nineteen
million
people have seen it. As Merrow says: "CHADD's name is on it,
but Ciba-Geigy
paid for it."
It turns out that in all of CHADD's considerable literature written
for the
public, there is rare mention of Ciba-Geigy. In fact, the only
instance of
the connection Merrow could find on the record was a small print
citation on
an announcement of a single CHADD conference.
In recounting CHADD's promotion of drug "therapy" for ADD, Merrow
says:
"CHADD's literature also says psychostimulant medications [like
Ritalin] are
not addictive".
Merrow brings this up with Gene Haslip, a DEA official in Washington.
Haslip
is visibly annoyed. "Well," he says, very misleading. It's [Ritalin's]
certainly a drug that can cause a very high degree of dependency.
like all
of
the very potent snmulants."
Merrow reveals that CHADD received a $750,OOO grant from the
US Department
of
Education in 1996 to produce a video, Facing the Challenge of
ADD. The video
doesn't just mention the generic name methylphenidate: it announces
the drug
by its brand name, Ritalin. This, at government (taxpayer) expense.
In the case of the school shootings, has an attempt been made
to mould media
response, to highlight various causes and omit others?
When the national press is completely silent on medical drugs,
we have to
question the background on that. We have to. We have to ask:
Why should this
horrendous factor be eliminated altogether from reporting to
the nation?
Real action is going to have to come from the public. Parents
in Littleton
and Springfield and West Paducah and Jonesboro are going to have
to ask the
hard questions and become relentless about getting real answers.
They are
going to have to learn about these drugs. They'll have to learn
which
violent
children in the school shootings were on these drugs. They are
going to have
to throw off robotic obedience to authorities in white coats.
And they are
going to have to join together. If they do, many people will
end up standing
with them.
Some sources of information:
* ADHD Action Group, telephone (212-769-2457.
* Dr Peter Breggin, psychiatrist, author and former full-time
consultant
with
the National Institute of Mental Health, website: www.breggin.com.
* ICSPP News, telephone (301-652-5580), website: www.icspp.org.
ICSPP News
publishes the following in bold letters: "Do Not Try to Abruptly
Stop Taking
Psychiatric Drugs. When trying to withdraw from many psychiatric
drugs
patients can develop serious and threatening reactions... Therefore,
withdrawal from psychiatric drugs should be done under medical
supervision..."
* Dr Joseph Tarantolo, psychiatrist, of the Washington chapter
of the
Society
of Psychoanalytic Physic phone (301-652-5580).
* The Merrow Report: to order transcript or videotape, telephone
(212-941-8060).
* The Truth Seeker Foundation, P0 Box 28550, San Diego, California
92198,
USA, telephone (619-676-0430), fax (619-676-0433), e-mail , website
. The
Foundation sponsors investigations into vital matters that have
not risen to
the level of open public debate. It believes that in order to
solve serious
human problems, we must commit ourselves to uncovering deeper
strata of
truth
that underlie public events, news and political discourse. Only
in this way
can we all create a more just future.
About the Author:
Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 15 years.
He has
written articles on politics, medicine and health for Spin, Stern,
Village
Voice, In These Times and a number of other magazines and newspapers
in the
United States and Europe. In 1982, the LA Weekly placed his name
in
nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the military
takeover
at the University of El Salvador. Mr Rappoport is the author
of Oklahoma
City
Bombing, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and AIDS Inc,, a widely praised
critique of
the original research behind HlV.