To: September 13, 2001
Tunku Varadarajan, Deputy Editor
Wall Street Journal, Online

Dear Mr. Varadarajan, upon reading your opinion piece Shrinking to Excess—I'll be damned if I let a psychiatrist near my son, [August 21, 2001] I wanted to stand up and cheer. But I have sobering news for you from the front line. I am a life-long physician, a neurologist/child neurologist, who has sought to address this very crime.

The time has already come when you and millions of US parents have little or no control over whether or not your children will be seen by a psychiatrist, or whether or not your/their children will be put on a psychiatric drug. Sorry about that. Firstly, ADHD theory and practice, viewed as "state of the art" education, has, long since, spread from the public schools of the nation to even the most elite of private and parochial schools. Years ago, I prescribed private/parochial placement for public school cases of ADHD, and the prescription worked every time. Such is the case no longer. Nowadays I caution the parents of children with "public school ADHD" that they must carefully interview every private and parochial school they are considering to assure that they too are not ADD/ADHD practitioners. I tell them that home-schooling is the only sure bet. Did you, T. Varadarajan, pin them down? Maybe they are closet believers, maybe they have heard of the latest rage in psychiatry; "infant" psychiatry and of the grand success being had "treating children as young as one and two years of age. Maybe you'd better check.

As for bawling out the teacher who says "your son has ADHD" or "your son needs Ritalin or else he can't come to school," it appears you have not heard of the millions of the parents across the country who have been confronted by the "diagnostic team" (with their practiced coercion), Child Protective Services, or family court, all skilled, indoctrinated practitioners of ADHD, convinced that Ritalin is the only acceptable outcome. You will come to understand that whether you think it is "poppycock"or not, or, whether or not you know it is a total, anti-scientific fraud--they are in control. The judge will make this clear, and your son will end up taking taking his Ritalin.

There is relative protection in family cohesiveness; with both parents resisting with a unified voice, but even that is not certain protection as the Carroll family of Berne, NY learned. They were deemed by the court to be "negligent" and ordered to resume Ritalin despite the fact that it was causing their son several, uncomfortable, side effects.

Sir, when your son is older, you are divorced, family courts will rule your lives. Family courts are thoroughly ADD/ADHD/bio-psych-indoctrinated, and interpret every mis-step and misbehavior to be a disease, a chemical imbalance, needing a chemical balancer—a pill. Sir—pronouncing it all poppycock, knowing it is poppycock, a fraud, a scam--family court will not be a friendly place, not, that is, unless—during your every visit, you give your son, his every pill, and unless, you cease and desist your speaking ill of the crime that is ADHD. Persist in those things Sir, and in the crack of a gavel, you will have lost your son and will have no say, whatsoever, about anything in his life, least of all what diagnoses he will sport and what pills he will take.

Don't for a minute think you will forever be able to keep your son out of the hands of psychiatrists, Sir. I admire your resolve and spirit but if you divorce when your son is 6 or 7 and is a "handful," your then "ex", she may just succumb to the siren call of biological psychiatry, which is "It's nobody's fault," it's a "chemical imbalance," nothing makes sense but "chemical balancers," pills. "Mr. Varadarajan, if you have any desire to see your son anymore, you had better just go along to get along, stop all this talk of "poppycock" and fraud, and give your son his medication, which all the "professionals" agree that he needs--and will always need."

Redd Howe, of Chattanooga, TN, and Steve Keene of Dallas, TX are two such fathers-of- divorce. Both have gone to jail for speaking the truth, trying to prevent such drugging/poisoning of their normal young sons. Steve was driven into bankruptcy; Redd, very nearly. Today, Redd, at the hands of a family court in Chattanooga, is under court order to say nothing of his sons or of the school-government crime of ADHD/Ritalin. To speak out has been Redd's crime. For doing so, today, he faces a choice of submitting to one psychiatrist from a court-ordered list of three, or of being in contempt of court and facing jail. Redd's son, Corey, was one of half of the children in his kindergarten class said to have ADD, urged to see their doctor, for confirmation. A year later, a 13, year- old school mate of Corey's, Travis Neal, fell over dead, in gym class, due to Ritalin- induced hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

In the past 10-12 years I have testified on behalf of 20 to 25 such parents of divorce, most of them Dads. The family courts, I tell them, have their psychiatric consultants in place; their minds made up, firmly in favor of the "chemical imbalance," "chemical balancer"—pill model. There is no room, anywhere, for the actual medical science and I have to tell this to parents who come to me today. I have to tell them there is no hope going in—that the label and the drug will stick—that I cannot possibly help them.

As you were saying, Mr. Varadarajan, your son goes to school next month, for the first time . . .

Sincerely,

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD
1303 Hidden Mountain Dr.
El Cajon, CA