Regarding: Psychiatric “Brain Diseases” Greatest-Ever U.S. Healthcare Fraud
From: Fred A. Baughman, Jr., MD, Neurologist/Child Neurologist
1303 Hidden Mountain Drive
El Cajon, CA 92019
[email protected]
www.adhdfraud.com
Dear Senators and Representatives,
The psyche is not the soma; mental is not physical; psychiatry is
not medicine. And yet, since 1970, Congress has legislated the “diagnosis”
and “treatment” of psychiatric “diseases” as if they were, such
that, today, 10 million entirely normal U.S. school children are
drugged, as if for real diseases.
I have been a child neurologist for 40 years, making disease/no
disease determinations in every patient. Psychiatrists do no such
thing. I have discovered real diseases while psychiatry has yet to
prove that a single entry in the DSM is an actual disease. Science or
fraud? The burden of proof lies with those who would prescribe, not
with the patient or parent who is due the proof as the essences of
informed consent. Is there an abnormality/a disease, something to be
made normal? If not, medical treatment is not justified. Would you
drug your own child, not knowing if they have an actual disease or
not?
On September 29, 2000, I testified to Congress’ hearing on
“Behavioral Drugs in Schools.” The millions of children labeled
“ADD/ADHD” were normal all along. For any physician to say that
any psychiatric condition is a disease, is fraudulent. David Fassler of the APA said not a word in rebuttal. Congress should have been
happy to hear its children were normal, but seemed not to want to
know.
In 1948, “neuropsychiatry” was divided into “neurology” to deal
with organic diseases of the brain, and “psychiatry,” to deal with psychological
conditions in normals.[1]
Psychiatric drugs appeared in the fifties leading to the de facto
merger of psychiatry and pharmaceutical industry and their joint marketing
strategy: call all behavioral and emotional problems “brain
diseases,” “chemical imbalances” needing “chemical balancers” ?
Pills!
Opening the Congressional Hearing “Federal Involvement in the
Use of Behavior Modification Drugs on Grammar School Children,”
September 29, 1970, Chairman Cornelius Gallagher, D-NJ, stated:
“One of our witnesses here today has been quoted as saying that the
use of this type of therapy will zoom from its current usage in
approximately two hundred thousand American children today.”
Here, the psycho-pharm cartel launched its claim that “ADHD” was a
brain disease needing drug treatment.
Ronald Lipman of the FDA claimed: “Hyperkinesis a medical
syndrome. It should be properly diagnosed by a medical doctor.”
John Peters of the National Project of Minimum Brain Dysfunction
testified: “We have to go mainly by analogy between children who
have known brain damage and the behavior in children who do not
have known brain damage, but do have identical behavior” we
assume that there has to be some dysfunction of the brain.”
On October 12, 1970, Congressman Cornelius Gallagher wrote
HEW Secretary Elliott Richardson: “I have received letters highly
critical of the focus of the medical side of minimal brain dysfunction
which is, one of at least thirty-eight names attached to this condition,
such a high incidence in the population – as high as thirty
percent in ghetto areas, may not be pathological at all?”
The DSM has grown from 112 psychiatric “diseases” in 1952, to
224 in 1980, and 374 in 1994 – not one an actual disease!
In 1993, Baughman[2] testified at hearings on NIH Research on
Antisocial, Aggressive and Violence-Related Behaviors (whereby
they make all such behaviors “diseases”): “If, as I am convinced,
these entities are not diseases, it would be unethical to initiate
research to evaluate biological interventions ? unethical and fatally
flawed scientifically.”
In 1996, Schiller (Dept. of Ed.), Jensen and Swanson (NIMH)[3],
wrote: “Once the parents and teachers’ recognize that children with
ADD are not lazy or “bad” but have a biological disorder, they can
stop blaming themselves”? It is Jensen who preaches the termination
of parental custody to achieve psychiatric compliance. It is
Jensen who has declined to “treat” his own son’s “ADHD”.
On July 15, 1996, Christopher Shays, R-CT[4] acknowledged the
moral dilemma, stating: “In ADHD, we are trying to draw the line
between personality and pathology, and we are placing millions of
children and adults on either side of the social, medical, and legal
boundary that divides the healthy from the sick. We should do so
only with the greatest care, and with particular reticence to make our
children medical patients?” But that is as far as he went! The epidemic
labeling and drugging continued.
On October 8, 1996, Lawrence Diller[5], wrote victimized mother,
Sue Parry: “The reason you have been unable to obtain any articles
presenting clear evidence of a physical or chemical abnormality is
there are none-the search for a biological marker is doomed from
the outset because of the contradictions and ambiguities of the diagnostic
construct of ADHD.” Here we had it – the reason “ADHD”
was not a disease; the reason it would never be a disease!
On April 15, 1998, I wrote Attorney General Reno: “The biggest
healthcare fraud in U.S. history is the representation of “ADHD” to
be a disease, and the drugging of millions of normal children.” No
answer. At the November 1998, NIH, Consensus Conference,
William Carey addressing “Is “ADHD” a Valid Disorder?” concluded:
“What is” described as “ADHD” in the United States appears to
be a set of normal behavioral variations?” Normal children acting
normally!
James Swanson and F.X. Castellanos (NIHM) spoke on the
“Biological Bases of ADHD” (when there were none). From a metaanalysis
of MRI brain scan research they reported: -Filipek and
colleagues[6], reported that a group of children with “ADHD/HKD”
(hyperkinetic disorder) had brain volumes about 10% smaller than
normal, Castellanos and colleagues[7] reported that right anterior
frontal, caudate, and globus pallidus regions were about 10% smaller
in “ADHD/HKD” group than in a control group.”
Baughman, a presenter, asked: “Dr. Swanson, why didn’t you
mention that virtually all of the ADHD subjects in the neuro-imaging
studies have been on chronic stimulant therapy, and that this is the
likely cause of their brain atrophy.”
Swanson: “I understand that this is a critical issue and in fact I am
planning a study to investigate that. I haven’t yet done it.”
In the 12 years since Nasralleh et. al.[8] had suggested the drugs,
not the never-validated disease “ADHD”, were causing the brain
atrophy, the NIMH and all psychiatric research refused to compare
untreated “ADHD” subjects with normals (to see whether or not
there was a difference), all the while representing what was probably
drug-induced atrophy as the “proof” of ADHD, the “disease.”
The NIMH and CHADD had come to the Consensus Conference
intent on representing the Swanson-Castellanos finding of brain atrophy
as proof of ADHD – the “disease.” With the fact publicly
exposed that all of the ADHD subjects had been treated, the final
statement of the Consensus Conference Panel, November 18, 1998,
was (and could only be): ?”we do not have an independent, valid
test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to
a brain malfunction.”
This was a public confession that there was no such disease as
ADHD, 18 years after its invention, with the epidemic at 4.4 million.
On December 13, 1999, the Surgeon General David Satcher[9]
became a psycho/pharm propagandist, announcing in the first-ever
Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health: “Mental illness is no different than diabetes, asthma or other physical ailments” Mental
illnesses are physical illnesses? We know the chemical disorders we
are treating?
Baughman[10] called for Satcher?s resignation, stating: all
physicians know that the presence of any bona fide disease is confirmed
by an objective finding – a physical or chemical abnormality.
You know there is no abnormality in life, or at autopsy, in “depression,
bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. Your role in this
deception is clear, you should resign.”
In January 2000, Castellanos[11], acknowledged: “Incontrovertible
evidence is still lacking, I’m confident we’ll confirm the case for
organic causes.”
On October 9, 2002, Castellanos:[12] published the first study of
ADHD to contain a substantial number of untreated subjects. But,
once again, they refused to perform a true, valid comparison of
ADHD-untreated subjects to true, matched, normal, control subjects.
Instead they compared the 49 ADHD-untreated subjects,
mean age 8.3 years, to a control group whose mean age was 10.9
years, 2.6 years older and bigger, with organs, brains included, 2.6 years older and bigger! Castellanos neither proved that
ADHD was the cause of the brain atrophy, or that the drugs ?
Ritalin and amphetamines ? were not. He just said he did.
With the main issue whether or not psychiatric diseases/ chemical
imbalances are brain diseases, the American Academy of Neurology
(of which I am a Fellow), and the Child Neurology Society (of which
I am a member) should be providing testimony to Congress. They
know as well as I that they are not. And they know as well as I that
this is the province and duty of neurologists, not of psychiatrists.
They should be subpoenaed if necessary.
You will find that I am speaking the horrible truth. There is no
scientific debate, there is only pure, scientific-medical fraud. The
psychiatric drugging of millions of entirely normal, if troubled, troublesome,
miseducated children, in the U.S., based on medical-scientific
deception and legislative/judicial coercion is a disgrace unprecedented
in U.S. history.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. The American Academy of Neurology: The First Fifty Years, 1948-1998.
Maynard M. Cohen (ed). The American Academy of Neurology, St. Paul,
MN.
2. Baughman FA. Testimony to the Panel on NIH Research on Antisocial,
Aggressive, and Violence-Related Behaviors and their Consequences,
September 23, 1993.
3. Schiller E., Jenson PS, Swanson J. In magazine of the Parent-Teachers
Association, from the Office of Special Education, US Department of
Education, 1996.
4. Testimony of Rep. Christopher Shays, R-CT at the Hearing of the
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, July 15, 1996.
5. Diller, L. Personal correspondence to S. Parry, October 8, 1997.
6. Filipek PA, Semrud-Clikeman M, Steingard RJ, et al. Volumetric MRI
analysis comparing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal controls.
Neurology. 1997;48:589-601.
7. Castellanos FX, Giedd JN, Marsh WL, et al. Quantitative brain magnetic
resonance imaging in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Ach Gen
Psychiatry. 1996; 53:607-616.
8. Nasrallah, et. al., Psychiatric Research, 1986;17:241-246.
9. Report on Mental Health of the Surgeon General, December 13, 1999.
10. Baughman FA Jr., letter to Surgeon General, David Satcher, December 13,
1999.
11. Castellanos, FX. Interview in Making Sense of Ritalin, Readers Digest,
January 2000.
12. Developmental Trajectories of Brain Volume Abnormalities in Children
and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder; F Xavier
Castellanos, MD; Patti P. Lee, MD; Wendy Sharp, MSW; Neal O. Jeffries,
PhD; Deanna K. Greenstein, PhD; Liv S. Clasen, PhD; Jonathan D.
Blumenthal, MA; Regina S. James, MD; Christen L. Eben, BA; James M.
Walter, MA; Alex Zijdenbos, PhD; Alan C. Evans, PhD; Jay N. Giedd,
MD; Judith L. Rapoport, MD JAMA. 2002; 288: 1740-1748