[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Some comments on below
Between 4 million and 6 million American children line up to receive doses
of a powerful drug called Ritalin every school day morning. These
youngsters, mostly boys, have been diagnosed with
"attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a multiple-choice
checklist of symptoms that is coming under increasing scientific attack for
its vagueness and vulnerability to abuse as a tool for control."
ADHD is a real disease (albeit an over-diagnosed one). There are specific
symptoms, specific limitations when children are given psychomimetric testing
for certain tasks (e.g attention holding and changing) and there is a large
body of functional MR and Positron Emission Tomography data that shows that
kids with ADHD have abnormal (diminished) activity in the frontal- striatal
connections. There is some morphometric (volume) data to indicate that they
have shrinkage (atrophy) of the a deep brain nucleus called the Caudate (the
same strucuture that is injured in Huntington's Disease).
One of the major researchers in fMRi of ADHD works at Cornell and I am
collaborating with her on a project to compare the fMRI result from kids who
have been on Ritilin and those who have never been given the drug.
I am no expert on the disease and I cannot comment on the validity of the
opinions stated below. I woiuld offer one generic prescription for the
critical assessment of the article quoted below. Be careful when an article
is as one sided as this. Be suspicious when the "orthodox" view is not
defended. Don't believe the results of ta single study especially when it
comes to complex behavior.
Many investigators have studied Ritilin and its affects. Ritilin is a
stimulant for healthy people. It acts like speed. And yet it has the
opposite effect on some (note importantly not all and not even most) kids, in
particular kids with ADHD. This implies something about these kids. In a way
reaction to the drug can be seen as a theraputic trial. Take a kid who can't
sit still and give him Ritilin. If he gets wilder he doesn't have the
underlying brain defect that produces ADHD. He has instead an entity from
which I suffered as a child - Shpelkas (yiddish for ants in the pants). If he
calms down instead the undelying brain abnormality has been revealed.
On a personal note. I have friends with children who have been diagnosed with
ADHD. It is quite apparent when the kids have taken their meds and when not.
They can focus much better when on the drug. It is no panacea. The kids feel
flat and often have problems keeping weigth on but there is no question that
their performance in school improves.
The drug does not enable learning. Dr. Rosemary Tannock, of the Hospital for
Sick Children in Toronto, reported last year that Ritalin has no effect on
children's short-term memory or the "phonological processing required for
reading." This year, both the Archives of General Psychiatry and the
National Institutes of Health have conducted studies that cast extreme doubt
on the idea that Ritalin is effective for anything except making children
stay in their chairs and keep quiet. Numerous other studies confirm that
Ritalin is remarkably effective in achieving what old Mrs. McGillicutty in
the one-room schoolhouse of a less credulous age could accomplish with a
look.
"The effect is, the child moves less and is less aware of competing
stimuli," says Steven Ingersoll, president of Smart Schools Inc. in
Brighton, which runs four charter schools.
Ingersoll says 22 percent of the students were on Ritalin when one charter
school began in 1996. That same year, fourth-grade students scored last in
their district on the state achievement test. Three years later, less than 1
percent of the kids are on Ritalin, and 100 percent of the now seventh
graders scored in the top category on state tests for reading and math.
Ingersoll argues that television has played an important role in attention
deficit-type behavior, but that "drugging is not what the child needs.
Ritalin is a powerful stimulant that "shares many of the pharmacological
effects of amphetamine, methamphetamine and cocaine, according to the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency. As one would expect, Ritalin is being stolen from
nurses, stations at schools and sold on the street for its effects.
Most disturbing of all are recent reports from New York and elsewhere where
parents who question whether their child should be placed on Ritalin are
turned in to the authorities. In recent testimony before Congress, Dr. Peter
Breggin, author of Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You
About Stimulants for Children, put the matter bluntly: "Parents ... are
being pressured and coerced by schools to give psychiatric drugs to their
children. Teachers, school psychologists and administrators commonly make
dire threats about their inability to teach children without medicating
them. ... They even call child protective services to investigate parents
for child neglect."
This is no movie. All over Michigan, Ingersoll says, parents face opposition
for refusing to give Ritalin to their children. But few are willing to come
forward for fear of reprisal. As of 1998, Michigan was No. 3 in the nation
in Ritalin use.
In fact, Ritalin use is at an all-time high. The financial windfall from
Ritalin sales surpasses that of Valium, Viagra or Prozac.
The company that manufactures the drug, Novartis, a multinational
pharmaceutical company, is facing a class-action lawsuit that claims the
company "colluded to create, develop and promote the diagnosis of Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
in a highly successful effort to increase the market for its product
Ritalin. The company denies the charge.
If this sounds to you less like the progress of a disease and cure and more
like a sinister marketing plan aimed at children, you're not alone. For more
information, just do a Web search on "Ritalin", and get ready to be
outraged.
