"What if ADHD Really Doesn't Exist?"

by: Tony Zizza, AbleChild.org

11/3/03

Now that another school year is fully upon us, what do hurried mornings and the like really mean for our children? Quickie hugs and kisses before dashing off to the bus stop. Reminders to study again for the Science test. Promises to be picked up on time from band practice.

Surely, this is typical stuff. Unfortunately, school mornings in America 2003 also mean doses of dangerous psychotropic drugs/antidepressants for our children. Their brains are still growing, but the "legal drugging" runs rampant/runs routine.

I'd like to know how we got to the point in our advanced culture where we drug millions of children to combat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when this alleged disorder has no medical validity
whatsoever. No blood tests to prove its existence.

ADHD is entirely subjectively symptom driven. It has made billions of dollars in profits for the makers of drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta, and others.

Someone please explain to me in a New York minute how children can spend summers and weekends concentrating on their jobs and mastering complex video games, but come the arrival of homework and tests - out comes the prescription bottles of mind altering drugs to assist in the treatment of ADHD. Something isn't adding up right.

So what if we were to properly learn ADHD really doesn't exist? That for decades we've simply been legally drugging our children at the insistence of the education/mental health profession? That there is something fundamentally shady with the makers of Concerta giving away over $250,000 in this year's "I See Success" ADHD scholarship contest to students between the ages of 6-18?

Where is the outrage? Zero tolerance seems to apply to petty offenses on school grounds. Rachel Boim is the latest student casualty. Drug free zone signs and Red Ribbon Week campaigns are everywhere, but where's
the outrage when children are drugged because they don't know how to read? Disgusting. Disgusting because ADHD is fraudulent on its face.

I agree with Dr. Fred A. Baughman, Jr, a board certified neurologist and child neurologist and Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, who has said, "In calling ADHD an abnormality/disease, without scientific facts, the psychiatrist knowingly lies, and violates the informed consent rights of both patient and parents. This is de facto medical malpractice."

Doesn't it bother anyone that ADHD is in fact good business, but bad medicine? That children have actually died from the use of Ritalin? That
organizations such as Children and Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD) receive funding from the makers of Ritalin? That children are
prescribed amphetamine-like drugs because their ADHD symptoms have made them do the unthinkable: "Be easily distracted. Not listen when spoken to directly. Interrupt others."

Interestingly, pharmaceutical companies who profit from ADHD made 600 million dollars from drugs to "treat" ADHD in 2001. Again, since ADHD really
doesn't exist, shouldn't we fight an entirely different War on Drugs?

Let's get back to basics, shall we? Let's embrace life's challenges instead of wishing them away with amphetamine-like drugs.

Our children deserve better. Don't they?

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Tony Zizza is Vice President/Georgia of Parents For Label
and Drug Free Education. http://www.ablechild.org