michelle wrote My daughter was diagnosed with ADD when she was a child. I let her take Ritalin for 2 semesters & then stopped entierly. She started drug use several years later[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD: Novartis, and Dr. Biederman at Harvard and Barkley at the U. of Mass. lie publically based on bogus research by Biederman that concludes that those with ADHD (never a proven disease) who are treated with Ritalin/amphetamines are 85% LESS LIKELY than those never treated to abuse drugs in later adolescence or adulthood. This flies in the face of all that has been published about the addictive potential of these drugs in the past 75 years and does so because they are selling these drugs or being paid by those who sell them] . I recently bought Dr. Amen's book "Healing ADD". He doesn't believe that Ritalin is "The Answer" but does use it[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD: uses lots of it, has his own children on it, or did, when I heard his pitch 8 months ago] . He backs up with SPECT images which is very convincing. Please let me know what your opinion is of Dr. Amen's opinions & research. My daughter is now (age 32) in jail for drug use & identity theft. Thank you.[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD: Read on Shellie, and good luck to you and your sad, victimized, addicted daugher. Every claim that ADHD is an abnormality within your child or any child is a fraud for no abnormality has been found and verified and this is why every claim of a test, including any kind of a scan, has diagnosed ADHD is a total fraud. Total, 100% and you may tell Dr. Amen I said so-- RICHARD M. SMITH, CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR IN CHIEF NEWSWEEK 251 WEST 57TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10019-1894 Re: Six Types of ADHD and the Inventive Dr. Amen. To the Editor: Although Dr. Daniel Amen is a psychiatrist--psychiatrists, go to medical school, learn the difference between 'disease' and 'no disease '; learn to distinguish the two, and remain medically and legally responsible for this distinction. Neurology, not psychiatry, deals with physical/organic, diseases/abnormalities of the brain. None of psychiatry's emotional/behavioral conditions/illnesses are actual diseases. I testified before the Congressional hearing on "Behavioral Drugs in the School," September 29, 2000: "it is fraudulent for anyone to claim that a any psychiatric illness is an actual disease." You at NEWSWEEK, have been thoroughly duped. No single form of ADHD has been validated as a disease, much less six, as claimed by Dr. Amen. Writing in SCIENCE, Jan. 26, 2001. I stated: "No proof exists that ADHD is a disease with a validating abnormality. Yet the public is told it is a "disease", (by the NIMH) that it is "neurobiologic" (by CHADD), or "neurobehavioral" (by the Am. Acad. of Pediatrics) . WB Carey, (University of Pennsylvania) testified at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Conference on ADHD in 1998 that "ADHD.appears to be a set of normal behavioral variations". The Consensus Conference Panel concluded: "we do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD.no data.indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction"' In that infants, toddlers, schoolchildren, adolescents, and adults said to have ADHD, have no disease whatsoever, there is no medical or ethical justification for (1) saying that there is, and for (2) giving them addictive, dangerous, sometimes deadly psychiatric medications. Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD,
Neurology & Pediatric Neurology (board certified) |