here is some more info about the current Ritalin controversy
gremlin
-----Original Message-----
From: Alamaine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, August 21, 2000 4:12 PM
Subject: [CTRL] Better Mgmt Through Chemistry
>From
>http://www.infomagic.net/liberty/vs000818.htm
>
>}}>Begin
>
>August 18, 2000
>
>Pharmaceutical blackmail
>Authorities use a heavy hand to keep kids on drugs
>
>About that "zero drug tolerance" policy in our schools: Does it really mean
>what it says? Or would it come closer to the truth for school
administrators to
>admit what they really oppose are pushers offering competing consciousness-
>altering substances?
>
>Do our public schools today constitute a kind of official, tax-supported
dope
>monopoly which will even threaten to take children away from parents should
>they refuse to go along with the mind-numbing nostrums which our
schoolmasters
>themselves now press on nearly a quarter of our young boys, the better to
keep
>those valuable but restless butts planted in their seats?
>
>The Albany Times Union, in a May 7 copyrighted story, tells what happened
to
>parents Michael and Jill Carroll of Albany, N.Y., when they tried to take
their
>son, 7-year-old Kyle, off the Ritalin.
>
>Kyle Carroll was first prescribed Ritalin last year, after he fell behind
at
>school. Teachers drew up an Individualized Education Plan, a standard
course of
>action for children with "special needs." But last fall, when Kyle started
>second grade, the Ritalin didn't seem to be doing much good. Furthermore,
the
>Carrolls grew concerned that Kyle was only sleeping about five hours a
night
>and eating just one meal a day -- lunch. So they told school officials they
>wanted to take Kyle off the Ritalin for two weeks to see if that helped.
>
>That's when they got a call, and then a visit, from a Child Protective
Services
>worker, based on a complaint from Kyle's school guidance counselor.
>The charge? "Child abuse," in the form of "medical neglect." In plain
English?
>Expressing doubts about keeping their child on dope.
>
>As a result, the Times Union reports the Carrolls are now on a statewide
list
>of alleged child abusers, and find themselves "thrust into an Orwellian
family
>court battle to clear their name and ensure their child isn't removed from
>their home."
>
>The child remains on the medication, "in part because they fear child
welfare
>workers will take him away if they don't," the Albany daily reports.
>Furthermore, the Albany paper found the Carrolls' case is far from unique,
>reporting: "Public schools are increasingly accusing parents of child abuse
and
>neglect if they balk at giving their children medication such as Ritalin, a
>stimulant being prescribed to more and more students."
>
>The American Academy of Pediatrics reports as many as 3.8 million
>schoolchildren, mostly boys, have now been diagnosed with the newly-coined
>"ADHD" -- attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder -- a psychiatric
"disease"
>with symptoms to which most of our grandparents would have responded by
simply
>smiling: "Boys will be boys." Or perhaps by asking, "Could it be that he
finds
>your school boring? Does it really make sense to spend three or four years
>teaching reading, a skill easily mastered in six weeks if you'd just use
>phonics?"
>
>At least a million children now take Ritalin for this "disorder." In two
school
>districts near Virginia Beach, Va., for instance, a 1999 study by
psychologist
>Gretchen LeFever found fully 20 percent of white boys in the fifth grade in
the
>1995-96 school year were receiving prescription drugs for ADHD. And even
the
>AAP acknowledged in a recent study that many cases are misdiagnosed.
>
>"This thing is so scary," says Patricia Weathers, of Millbrook, a suburb of
>Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Officials at the Millbrook school district called police
and
>child protective services when she took her 9-year-old son, Michael Mozer,
off
>medications earlier this year.
>
>Weathers reported her child's prescribed drug cocktail -- including
Ritalin,
>the anti-depressant Paxil, and Dexedrine (another stimulant, like Ritalin)
>caused her boy -- now attending a private school -- to hallucinate.
>
>"Absent evidence that the lives of children are at stake when they're not
on
>Ritalin," USA Today editorialized this week, "no arm of the state should be
>ramming the drug treatment down parents' -- and children's -- throats."
>Amen to that. The underlying problem here is the notion that children
belong
>first to the state -- that they're best "socialized" in state-run
institutions,
>and that biological parents are allowed to retain custody only at the
>discretion of school and "child welfare" officials, who after all have
>"professional diplomas," and thus "know best."
>
>No free country can long operate under such a presumption, with its
inevitable
>corrosive effect on the family. And this -- at least as much as the
>corresponding academic failures of the public schools -- is what drives the
>large and growing movement for separation of school and state. (See:
>www.sepschool.org)
>
>[Editor's note: See also today's article by Thomas Sowell in Jewish World
>Review -- "Wake up, parents!"]
>
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>
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>
>
>End<{{
>A<>E<>R
>
>Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
>+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
>new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
>tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
>State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
>repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
>"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
>by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
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>the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
>has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
>accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
>share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
>subjects.
>[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
>Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
>
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