Lax Governmental Oversight

Is the Food and Drug Administration covering up for the drug companies’ disregard for the public’s safety? The public often relies on government agencies to warn them of potential dangers of consumer products, from toys to automobiles to drugs. We place our trust in those with the ability to investigate, test, compile data, and truthfully report to the public. For example, in 1999, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of 19 million swimming pool toys called dive sticks, plastic toys that could be retrieved from the bottom of a pool during diving games. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the commission was aware of six injuries to children between the ages of six and nine years of age. Parents receive warnings about the potential hazards of toys quite frequently, warnings issued based on as few as two to three incidences of injury. But what about drugs? In this area, the attitude seems much more lax.

A misconception held by much of the public is that before a drug is approved for sale, our Food and Drug Administration independently studies it to determine whether it’s safe and effective. This is not so, as Peter Breggin points out in Talking Back to Prozac.[lxxx] The FDA doesn’t have the funds to do this. It’s the pharmaceutical companies that test their own products; the FDA is merely the overseer. This leaves a lot of “wiggle room” for the companies to make sure their products look good. In the case of Prozac, Breggin asserts that, “A lot of fancy numbers-crunching was required to make Prozac look any better than a lowly sugar pill.”[lxxxi] He has a whole chapter explaining how Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly did this. Here are a few of the ways the testing of this drug was flawed:

The subjects selected for the study did not include people who had suicidal tendencies; that way the company didn’t have to risk finding out whether the drug could in fact prevent suicide.

Hospitalized psychiatric patients were excluded from approval studies

Also excluded were the elderly—and children. (Leaving children out would not be a flaw if off-label prescription were not legal.)

The actual trials used as the basis for FDA approval included only 286 test subjects. The company’s 11,000-test-subject figure, used in information sent to physicians, misrepresents the level of participation of these subjects.

There was a high participant dropout rate, partly attributable to the drug’s lack of efficacy and its side effects, which included nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, nausea, loss of appetite, and diarrhea.

Those trials that were rigorously controlled lasted only a few weeks.

Negative data were pooled and reshuffled to yield positive results. This was done in spite of the fact that the FDA’s own directives reject this kind of statistical sleight-of-hand.
Once a drug is approved, we assume the government is protecting us by looking out for adverse effects. Here again, the public would be disillusioned to know the full truth. In 1993, the FDA changed the way adverse reactions to drugs were entered into the reporting system. Specifically, the agency deleted medical report comments by doctors about specific patients. For example, a 1991 adverse reaction report shows the case of a 15-year-old girl having been hospitalized for an attempted suicide after being on Prozac for one month. The report clearly stated, “She did not have a history of suicidal thoughts prior to Prozac” and that “Prozac was discontinued and the patient fully recovered.” The same entry in 1993 merely states that there was a suicide attempt and hospitalization. Who benefits from the omission of such information? Certainly not the public. While toys linked to a few accidents are banned, Prozac-related deaths, which average five to six per week, are swept under the rug, and the FDA allows the continued prescription of the drug.

The FDA/Drug Company Connection. Part of the problem is that FDA doctors have very close affiliations with drug companies. For example, when the FDA convened a panel in 1991 to review concerns about Prozac and violence, the agency itself disclosed before the hearing that a number of panel members had financial conflicts of interest because they had received grants from various antidepressant manufacturers. One member even had grants pending from Eli Lilly. It has also been shown that another member did not disclose his engagement to speak at seminars funded by Eli Lilly, nor the fact that he had two grants pending from antidepressant manufacturers. What’s more, he had received some four million dollars worth of research grants from such manufacturers in the eight years preceding the Prozac hearings. In the end, nearly all the panel members either had clear conflicts of interest or belonged to the psychiatric profession, a profession that is today so tied to a prescription-writing approach to mental health that objectivity is hard to come by. It should come as no surprise, then, that the panel voted 10 to 0 that there was no evidence proving that antidepressants were linked to violent or suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

An important criticism of the FDA panel was that it did not acknowledge the importance of the rechallenging process in its review of Prozac. With rechallenging, patients who have experienced side effects that then subside when they stop taking the drug begin taking it again to see if the same negative effects recur. If they do, the side effects in question can be closely linked to the drug. Harvard researcher Dr. Martin Tisher told the FDA panel that at least eight patients had been rechallenged with Prozac and experienced violent suicidal thoughts, which established a connection between the drug and these side effects. Dr. Tisher said that rechallenging could provide more definitive data about the drug, and could do so more quickly, than new clinical trials. But the panel was not interested in the findings. What’s more, when Tisher asked to present slides correlating Prozac with violent, suicidal thoughts, the panel refused to see them. It did, however, allow slides that defended Prozac.

Our Brain Chemistry, Our Selves

How did we get to the point where children as young as four are being prescribed mind-altering drugs? To understand this phenomenon, it helps to go back a few decades. In 1963, Life magazine introduced the American public to the concept of brain chemical imbalances. Psychiatrists had been experimenting with drugs, particularly LSD, and had become impressed with the wide variety of behaviors, emotions, and personality changes that could be induced by taking only a tiny speck of the drug. A hypothesis was born out of this: If such wide variations of behavior could be produced with such a small amount of a brain-affecting drug, then any variation from normal behavior must be due to extremely fine changes in brain chemistry. And therefore, to attain normalcy when there was a deviation from it, brain chemistry simply needed to be balanced. Famed psychologist B.F. Skinner told Life magazine, “In the not too distant future, the motivational and emotional conditions of normal life will probably be maintained in any desired state through the use of drugs.”

In 1967, psychiatrists made a chilling prediction that showed just how much psychiatry wanted to use drugs for behavior control, not just for treating mental illness. A psychiatrist named Klein had been studying the effects of psychiatric drugs on normal humans and reported that, “The present breadth of drug use may be almost trivial when we compare it to the possible numbers of chemical substances that will be available for the control of selected aspects of a man’s life by the year 2000. If we accept the position that human mood, motivation, and emotions are reflections of a neurochemical state of brain, then drugs can provide a simple, rapid, expedient means to produce any desired neurochemical state we wish. The sooner we can cease to confuse scientific and moral statements about drug use, the sooner we can consider the types of neurochemical states that we wish to provide for people.” In other words, if the eugenics movement, which had sought to genetically design the right kind of people, was now largely discredited, we could at least design the right way for people to think and feel.

Today, the “therapeutic” altering of our neurochemical states is an accepted part of life. Whether or not this is a good idea is, philosophically, open to question. But whether or not we should be altering our children’s neurochemical states is a moral question. And an even more pressing question is this: Do we really know what we’re doing? Particularly with relation to the new SSRI’s, the whole group of selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors that began with Prozac, do we really understand the workings of serotonin?

Should We Be Tinkering With Serotonin? People are being told that they are depressed because seratonin levels in their brains are too low. By increasing seratonin, these medications are supposed to restore balance to help people feel better. But this logic is the exact opposite of what the original researcher on seratonin, the Israeli scientist Dr. Felix Sloman, discovered in the mid-1950s. Dr. Sloman found that a buildup of seratonin was so toxic to the brain that it would cause even rabbits, the most docile of creatures, to become aggressive. Sloman found seratonin buildup to cause a variety of adverse reactions, including migraines, hot flashes, irritability, sleep disturbances, including horrifying nightmares, heart pains, breathing difficulty, tension, and anxiety. “When you look at Dr. Sloman’s research,” says Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, a specialist in adverse reactions to psychiatric medication, “and then at the research that we’ve had since on seratonin, you find that serotonin metabolism is low in depression, meaning that the serotonin is not breaking down but building up like it did with these people that couldn’t metabolize the seratonin on their own. What’s tragic is that these drugs are designed to enhance that buildup effect, to increase seratonin by decreasing your ability to break seratonin down. As a result, we’re actually causing what they’re telling us we’re curing with these drugs.”[lxxxii]

Prozac was the first in an array of similar-acting medicines that includes Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor, Serzone, Celexa, Anafranil, and Wellbutrin. One would hope that the kinks were worked out, making these newer medications improvements upon Prozac. In truth, though, this is not the case. We should be very concerned about the drugs we are taking, states Dr. Tracy. These drugs can induce psychosis, causing people to lose touch with reality and commit horrible, violent acts against themselves and others. “If you aren’t aware of what psychosis is,” says Tracy, “take a look at Eric Harris at Columbine, a clear case of extremely psychotic behavior. [He was on Luvox.] Or look at Michael McDermott. The day after Christmas he went on a shooting spree at work. [McDermott had been taking several SSRI’s.]” Tracy speaks of people on SSRI’s attempting suicide repeatedly and killing themselves in violent ways. Also, adds Tracy, women are shooting and stabbing themselves, a phenomenon not ordinarily seen in women taking their lives until recent times. Additional reactions to antidepressants include mood disorders, arson, substance abuse, insomnia, violent nightmares, impulsive behavior with no concern for punishment, and reckless driving. With at least one-eighth of the population now on these medications, is it any wonder that we have the most violent and psychotic society we’ve ever seen?”[lxxxiii] Tracy asks. She reports a recent Yale finding that 8 percent of people being admitted to psychiatric wards are there as a result of psychosis induced by one of these four drugs: Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, or Luvox. That 8-percent figure may not sound like a lot, but it represents about 150,000 people being admitted to hospitals yearly.

The term SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and the public is given the impression that these new antidepressants work by affecting only the level of serotonin, the problem neurotransmitter in depression. But these drugs are not as selective as one might think. This is a point made by Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. First of all, as Glenmullen explains in his book Prozac Backlash,[lxxxiv] adrenaline and dopamine, which are other neurotransmitters, are also affected when serotonin is tinkered with. A second point is that serotonin affects not just the brain, but also other parts of the body, such as the circulatory system and the gastrointestinal tract. Furthermore, Glenmullen points out, when serotonin is manipulated by drugs, the levels achieved are not in the natural range. All of these factors contribute to SSRI side effects.

What Parents Tell Us

The trend toward psychotropic overmedication is something that affects all age groups in our society, but children are particularly victimized in two respects. First, as we’ve mentioned, children were not included in the pre-approval trials for many of these drugs, and because their brains are smaller and still developing, they may be more vulnerable than adults to side effects. Second, by and large, they cannot speak for themselves or are not given the opportunity to. Since parents are the best advocates for children, we have given some parents the opportunity to relate their experiences in the following.

Brenda

My 16-year-old son, Jared, was having a little trouble in school. The teacher said that he was trying to self-medicate with alcohol. She suggested that we see a doctor and that he be put on one of the drugs for depression.

When we took Jared to the doctor to be diagnosed, the doctor spent about 15 minutes with us before deciding that he needed to be placed on an antidepressant drug. We told the doctor that we didn’t want him taking any drugs like Prozac. He put Jared on 20 mg of Paxil, which he said was nothing like Prozac. In actuality it is. It’s the same kind of drug, only stronger.

I was never told about the potential risks of the drug my son was given, only that Jared might experience dry mouth and itchy eyes. That’s it.

Once home, my son protested that he wasn’t depressed and that he didn’t want to take the pills. About a week later, I noticed that he hadn’t taken even one. I spoke to Jared, saying, “Why haven’t you taken these?” And he replied, “I don’t want to take these drugs, Mom. I don’t want to take any pills.” “Jared,” I said, “the doctor said that it will help you. Try them.” So he started taking the drugs.

The change in Jared’s personality was immediate. The first day on the medication, he told me that he felt weird and jumpy. So I called the doctor and told him about my son’s symptoms. The doctor’s reply was that he gave Jared the smallest dose possible and that we should cut the pills in half. That is what I did.

Jared’s weird behavior continued. He became aggressive, where he was normally very quiet and shy. He would get right up into your face, where he had never been that way before. I didn’t connect it with the Paxil but thought that Jared might be taking a street drug since his behavior was so bizarre. I guess we just don’t want to believe that a prescribed pill would do something like this.

Prior to starting the medication, before Jared’s teacher ever approached me, I noticed that he didn’t care about school, and he was hanging out with kids who liked to drink. I was concerned about that. But I think back on that now and realize that a lot of kids don’t like school and that doesn’t make them crazy. I wonder why I ever took him to the doctor in the first place. I’m sure that this would have passed.

Jared had a violent confrontation with a family friend. She had been married to my father at one time, and we spent a lot of time with her at family functions. He was pretty close to her, as they shared the same interests. She even turned him on to The Hobbit, the book series. They had the same kind of personality; she was kind of quiet, too.

He was extremely intoxicated when he and two other kids went to her house. They say they went to rob her, but they didn’t take anything. My son stabbed her to death. He stabbed her 61 times.

There was nothing in Jared’s background or personality that would have given any indication that he had the capacity to commit such a brutal crime. No, that was not Jared. It was a totally different person. Everybody who knew Jared was in shock. We just couldn’t believe it happened.

He said, “Mom, I don’t know what was wrong with me. I just felt so evil.” This has happened to other families. I’ve talked to many parents in similar situations, and they all say the same thing—that their nonviolent children became violent while on medication. Jared was an extremely quiet and caring person. He would never have done anything like that, ever.

The doctor misled us. He never warned us about the dangers of combining alcohol and this medication. I believe he also should have tested Jared’s liver. I think Jared has a missing enzyme in his liver because when he was arrested there was a very high level of Paxil in his system. We believe that Jared could not metabolize this drug properly, and it built up in his system. The doctor never warned us of the side effects of the drug, especially one that I learned about after the fact–homicidal tendencies. This is written on the physician’s insert, but we did not get this information because the doctor gave us samples without instructions. What is truly amazing is that the manufacturer has knowledge of Paxil’s potential to make people kill other people and tries to hide the fact by writing it in very small print way down at the bottom. But it is there.

My son now resides in a state prison here in California, serving a life sentence without parole. He had never been in trouble before, had never been violent. His life is over. I realize that he took a life, but it never would have happened if he had never taken that drug.[lxxxv]

Robert

My ex-wife was having trouble managing Ryan at home, so she took him to the local family physician and asked for Ritalin outright to see if it would improve his behavior at home. The doctor agreed. That’s what started him on the road to more drugs and worsening health.

Part of Ryan’s problem was the fact that he had adverse reactions to the drugs. Every time Ryan exhibited a side effect from a drug or change in dosage, the doctors would rediagnose Ryan with a new condition, using the DSM-4, and then prescribe more medications to try to treat the new condition, which, in turn, resulted in more side effects, which, in turn, resulted in a rediagnosis of more conditions. It began a real vicious cycle that led to a lot of problems with Ryan after several years of enduring that kind of process.

One of the negative side effects of a lot of medications is reduced appetite. Ritalin, in particular, suppresses appetite. Ryan didn’t want to eat because he had no appetite. When he was institutionalized, part of his “therapy” was known as wheelchair therapy. They would restrain him in a wheelchair, to conserve his strength, and not let him get out of the chair, claiming it was for his own good. They would tell him he was weak because he wouldn’t eat. Therefore, he would have to stay confined to a wheelchair until he ate something. They would make him stay there until he eventually ate something. Sometimes this would go on for days because he had no appetite. Then they would feed him intravenously. And if he had any outbursts or other problems (again, largely due to the side effects of the medications and the changes in medications) he would be restrained. He would be put in four-point restraints and sometimes left unattended for hours, perhaps even the better part of a day….He was on four or five drugs at one point in time. And he was exhibiting the typical signs of a Parkinsonian-type disorder—tremors, slurred speech, shuffling gait, and edema.

My current family and I became extremely concerned. So we took legal action to try to get Ryan taken off of these drugs. It’s a real difficult process to go through–not that it isn’t worth it because it absolutely is–but it’s an uphill battle every inch of the way. People operate with a belief that doctors do the right things for the right reasons. But in a lot of instances there’s no really good evidence to back that up. My ex-wife, for example, placed a lot of faith in the medical establishment, thinking that these drugs were the silver bullets Ryan needed to lead a healthy and productive life. She was so brainwashed that she could not grasp the obvious, that Ryan’s treatment was life- threatening. In her denial, she would twist what she saw to support her point of view. “Oh, look at this,” she would say, pointing to his edema. “ It looks like he’s gaining some weight.”

When I objected to what was happening, she immediately tried to strip me of my parental rights for interfering with his medical treatment practices. That was the first battle I had to fight in court. It took somewhere between six months and a year of effort to overcome that. Once I overcame that hurdle, I was then able to get additional doctors to support our position, doctors whose beliefs are contrary to the mass medical beliefs that psychiatric diagnoses and drugs are the right way to treat a kid. I was then able to get them to support our cause by talking to people, including the legal people who were working on the case. Ryan had been given a court-appointed guardian to represent his interests because the judge felt that Ryan’s interests were not being represented fairly by myself or my ex-wife. And we got lucky with her as well. She had had medical training as a nurse and grasped fairly quickly the notion that Ryan’s life was in tremendous jeopardy at that point in time due to the drugs and treatment programs that he was under. She became a strong advocate for getting him off the drugs as well….

This whole business of diagnosing children with psychiatric conditions constitutes medical fraud. A really big issue is tied in to financial incentives. I had a conversation with one of the psychiatrists at an institution my son was in. He flat out told me that they get paid by the diagnosis. That threw up a big, red flag for me because basically what it said is that in today’s society if you or a child you represent present to a psychiatrist, you’re very inclined to walk out of there with some sort of a diagnosis. They’re going to talk to you for a few minutes, then whip open the DSM-4 and read through the pages to find some diagnosis that fits. Everybody has a foot that will fit a shoe in the DSM-4. And their treatment for all these diagnoses are prescription medications, anything from Prozac and Ritalin to some of the real heavy-duty ones…I think there’s a lot of fraud in this whole area because what they’re doing is perpetrating the notion that people have things wrong with them when, in fact, probably a large majority of them don’t. And they’re also perpetrating the notion that these drugs are going to work when, in fact, they may or may not work. In fact, they may be very life- threatening….If you read the Physicians’ Desk Reference, you will see how dangerous they are. And most of them weren’t approved with anything more than a very minor testing and analysis in small focus groups. They haven’t had a lot of time on the market. They haven’t had a long time to see what their effects on people are going to be.[lxxxvi]

Arnel

My husband and I have three boys who are now 21, 17, and 15. The community that we lived in had a very high consumption rate of Ritalin. In fact, it had the highest consumption rate in the state. And that was because of a doctor who operated an ADHD clinic, who said he had the condition himself. It was really the ADD epicenter. All three of my boys were considered at risk for this disorder, which is not unusual today because we’re literally at epidemic proportions in the United States.

What happened in our situation was that at the end of my middle son’s kindergarten year his teacher approached us and said that he wasn’t reading as well as his classmates, that he wasn’t working to his potential, and that he seemed very distractible. This teacher said that he was not unruly or rambunctious, but he just wasn’t doing very well. She was very explicit and suggested that we seek out an ADD diagnosis. She didn’t mention the medication, but she said, I think this is what your son has.

We started to gather information. We got some from the school district, which we later found out was supplied to the district through a certain pharmaceutical company. I thought that was very interesting. We read through it all. The literature said that ADHD is due to a neurochemical imbalance. So we started kicking this around and mulling it over.

My son went on to first grade, and he still didn’t do real well. He still wasn’t very interested in school. Looking back, he had a regimented teacher that wanted the children to buckle down and study in first grade, which is okay to a point, but she was kind of a battle-axe teacher. He went on to second grade. And he did okay, although he still was not real interested in the academics of school. He entered third grade and really started falling behind.

I went to the pediatrician who did the evaluations. The teacher and I also evaluated him by filling out a questionnaire about his activity level. And he certainly fit the ADD profile. He didn’t stay on task. So we went ahead and, reluctantly, put him on Ritalin, about 20 mg a day. And it was just in the morning because that’s when the kids did most of the academic work.

People ask me now, did it help? I honestly don’t know because we didn’t give it to him on the weekends, although a lot of people do because doctors say that the kids are learning 365 days a year. I never really observed him on the medication, although I did observe him off the medication. And unfortunately he had some very severe adverse drug reactions. He had cardiac arrhythmia and very bad chest pains several times. So that went on through third and fourth grade.

Then in the fifth grade, his academics really started to fall apart. So a teacher suggested putting him on Dexedrine. Well, that lasted for three weeks because it kept him up until one o’clock every morning. And it kept me up, too, trying to get him to go to sleep. He just wasn’t tired. And this was from the morning dose of the medication. So I thought this was pretty powerful stuff.

I started talking to a lot of parents. My skepticism really started to surface about this because we would be at a soccer game or at some sort of a cocktail party, and it was really the talk of the town. And I thought something seemed not right. In fact, it seemed very wrong. Then in ‘95 or ’96, I really started looking into this. A very good book came out called, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, by Dr. Thomas Armstrong. Then there were certain articles that were coming out in magazines and newspapers. I started reading some books by Dr. Peter Breggin, who’s written Talking Back to Ritalin, Toxic Psychiatry, and The War Against Children. On the flip side, I started reading other articles that I considered to be very pro-diagnosis and pro-medication.

Eventually, after the Dexedrine experience, I started to realize that it was an issue of underachievement, of underperformance. And I could see that very readily with my oldest boy. The district had approached us about him, too, telling us that they would really encourage an evaluation because he wasn’t doing well all though middle school. Then he hit the ninth grade, and he took off. He finally buckled down and started studying. He saw some relevance to what he was learning; it suddenly became more meaningful and purposeful. He did very well in high school, in the ninth through twelfth grades. In fact, he went on to be the secretary of the National Honor Society at his school, graduated with honors, and is now an engineering major at a very good four-year college.

My middle son is doing okay, too, although he hasn’t taken off academically like my other son did. But who’s to say he should? Just because children are not equal does not mean they are mentally disordered and that they need to be placed on Ritalin. Now I can accept their differences.

I think you’ve got to be very, very careful about the information you get, to understand where your information is coming from. I tend to tell parents that there are many well-intentioned people that have been very misinformed, basically lied to about ADHD and, more than that, the whole umbrella of learning disabilities. Parents are told all kinds of things by different health care professionals, counselors, social workers, psychologists, and occupational therapists about what these disorders are. And it really boils down to what your ideology is. Whether you look at this as a neurochemical imbalance or as an environmental influence depends on whether you have a biological psychiatric point of view or a more psychosocial point of view.

Much of the time they do not take sex differences between boys and girls into account. It’s a generalization, but I think it’s true that boys tend to grow up later than girls. There’s not anything wrong with them. It’s just that boys are in an educational system that demands the same of boys and girls. The boys will get there. They’re just slower to mature.[lxxxvii]

Joyce

My son started to exhibit behavior problems. He would say things to me like, “I’m not going to live past 25.” “I have nothing to live for.” “You don’t know me.” “This world is a terrible place.” And he would also tell me, “It’s too hard to be a Christian.” About six months later, we took him to a doctor, and my son was diagnosed with severe depression. I was handed Zoloft pills and told that they would be safe. There would be no side effects. The medicine was even safe to take if the person were to use alcohol or combine the pills with another drug, I was told. The doctor also told us that it would take two weeks before we would see any difference in his behavior.

Five days later, the incident happened. My son shot and killed a woman during a robbery. It didn’t make any sense because my son was, as the paper called him, the all-American kid. He was a great kid until a few months before the incident….

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that five days after [my son started] the medication the shooting occurred. My son had never been in such trouble for anything before this happened. I do think he had fought sometimes, as a lot of teenage boys do. But he had never done anything this horrendous.

After the arrest, a neurologist performed a lot of medical tests on Brian and told us that he was depressed, with a mild brain abnormality. He said that he had a bad reaction to the Zoloft, what they call akathisia, an inability to sit still that manifests as extreme agitation. He also became manic, violently insane. If you were to read about the side effects of these drugs, they have half a dozen listings of awful things that can happen from a bad reaction to the drug. That tells me that the drugs could have been responsible for what happened to Brian.

My son is not alone in how he reacted to this drug. I know of two other families that just experienced the same thing. Both children were 15-year-old boys. One boy, from Tennessee, shot and killed his mother, and then put the gun in his mouth and shot himself….Another young man in Birmingham shot, stabbed, and buried his 17-year-old brother. Both of these boys were medicated at the time….Today my son is in prison. For his crime, he was given life without parole.”[lxxxviii]

Is This What We Want for Our Children?

An alien observer looking at the current drug situation in the United States would certainly be confused. On the one hand we’re preaching drug avoidance to our youth. On the other, we’re dosing a lot of them with mind-altering drugs, which, as we’ve just seen, can sometimes be tragically behavior-altering as well.

One of the results of our eagerness to fix problems with drugs is the widespread abuse of drugs that have been legally prescribed to children. According to the DEA, Ritalin and other stimulants are among the most frequently stolen prescription medicines,[lxxxix] with the pills often crushed and snorted for an immediate high. Ritalin is now a prime choice among the drugs abused on college campuses across the country. High school students use it recreationally as well. A 1997 Indiana University survey reported that nearly 7 percent of high school students had engaged in this practice.[xc]

It’s time to reassess what we want for our children. Do we want to bring them up in a drug culture or not? Do we want to mold them into the confines of our educational system, or do we want to fashion an education that will respond to their needs? What are our criteria for a successful child? And will we continue to label those who don’t meet these criteria as psychologically abnormal? We’re sticking this label onto an awful lot of kids lately.

An important point was made in Contemporary Directions in Psychopathology, a textbook used to train psychiatrists.[xci] It was stated that there was “evidence that the current psychiatric diagnosis system is a reflection of social, cultural developments rather than scientific data.” The editor of this book, Gerald Clerman, also edited The Archives of General Psychiatry, and sat on the American Psychiatric Association’s task force for its diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, the “psychiatrist’s bible” of diagnostic labels. So basically, in a totally “establishment” textbook, we have an admission that social and cultural expectations, rather than objective science, form the basis for the way we evaluate who is mentally abnormal.

We would do well to remember this—and then to rethink our penchant for labeling—before we prescribe any more brain-altering drugs to children.

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[i] The Hoax of Learning and Behavior Disorders, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (pamphlet), Los Angeles, 2001.

[ii] Zito, Julie Magno, “Trends in the Prescribing of Psychotropic Medications to Preschoolers,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Feb. 23, 2000, Vol. 283, No. 8, pp. 1025-30.

[iii] West, Jean, “Children’s drug is more potent than cocaine,” The Observer, London, Sept. 9, 2001.

[iv] Graham, J.E., et al., “A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of fluoxetine in children and adolescents with depression.” Arch. Gen. Psychiatry, 1997; 54:1031-37.

[v] Breggin, Peter R., “Today’s Kids Suffer Legal Drug Abuse,” Newsday, Sept. 23, 1999, p. A53.

[vi] Gary Null interview with Dr. Fred Baughman, Feb. 12, 2001.

[vii] Conners, C. Keith, “Conners’ Parent Rating Scale—Revised (S),” Multi-Health Systems Inc., North Tonawanda, NY.

[viii] Heckman, Candace, “Kite-flying Franklin might have had disorder, educator says,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 1999.

[ix] Allee, Rod, “Do We Need to Drug So Many Kids Into Conformity?” The Record (New Jersey), Mar. 26, 2000, p. A-4.

[x] Armstrong, Thomas, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, Dutton, New York, 1995, p. 15.

[xi] NIH Consensus Development Conference on ADHD (transcript), Nov. 16-18, 1998, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

[xii] Armstrong, Thomas, op. cit., p. 8.

[xiii] “An interview with Judith Rapaport, M.D.,” CHADD newsletter, webmaster@chadd.org.

[xiv] DeGrandpre, Richard, Ritalin Nation, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1999, p. 160.

[xv] Stein, David, Ritalin Is Not the Answer: A Drug-Free Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1999.

[xvi] Gary Null interview with Dr. David Stein, Feb. 13, 2001.

[xvii] Schaler, Jeffrey A., Addiction is a Choice, Open Court Publishing, Peru, Ill., 2000.

[xviii] Gary Null interview with Dr. Jeffrey Schaler, Feb. 13, 2001.

[xix] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, revised (DSM-III-R), Washington, D.C., 1994.

[xx] Layton, Mary Jo, and Lindy Washburn, “‘Hyperactive’ Kids: Victims of a Plot?—Lawsuit Alleges Scheme to Sell Ritalin,” The Record (New Jersey), Oct. 1, 2000, p. A-1.

[xxi] Voreacos, David, and Mary Jo Layton, “2 Suits Target Maker of Ritalin—Allege Plot to Boost Sales,” The Record (New Jersey), Sept. 15, 2000, p. A-1.

[xxii] Layton, Mary Jo, and Lindy Washburn, “‘Hyperactive’ Kids: Victims of a Plot?—Lawsuit Alleges Scheme to Sell Ritalin,” The Record (New Jersey), Oct. 1, 2000, p. A-1.

[xxiii] Elkind, David, The Hurried Child, Addison-Wesley, New York, 1981.

[xxiv] Suriano, Robyn, “As kids get put on pills, critics fret,” Orlando Sentinel, Nov. 26, 2001.

[xxv] Gary Null interview with Dr. David Stein, Feb. 13, 2001.

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Suriano, op. cit.

[xxviii] Harris, Gardiner, “Use of Mood-Altering Drugs to Control Toddlers’ Behavior Jumped in the ‘90s,” Wall Street Journal, Fed. 23, 2000.

[xxix] Zito, Julie Magno, “Trends in the Prescribing of Psychotropic Medications to Preschoolers,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Feb. 23, 2000, Vol. 283, No. 8, pp. 1025-30.

[xxx] Gary Null interview with Dr. Jeffrey Schaler, Feb. 13, 2001.

[xxxi] Robinson, Holly, “Generation Rx,” Parents, Nov. 2001, p. 82.

[xxxii] Kaiser, David, “Commentary: Against Biologic Psychiatry,” Psychiatric Times, CME Inc., webmaster@mhsource.com.

[xxxiii] O’Meara, Kelly Patricia, “Writing May Be on Wall for Ritalin,” Insight, Oct. 16, 2000, omeara@insightmag.com.

[xxxiv] Zernike, Kate, and Melody Peterson, “Schools’ Backing of Behavior Drugs Comes Under Fire,” The New York Times, Aug. 19, 2001.

[xxxv] Breggin, Peter R., Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants for Children, Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME, 1998, p. 5.

[xxxvi] Sears, William, and Lynda Thompson, The A.D.D. Book: New Understandings, New Approaches to Parenting Your Child, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 1998, p. 234.

[xxxvii] Wurtzel, Elizabeth, “Adventures in Ritalin,” The New York Times, op-ed page, Apr. 2, 2000.

[xxxviii] Cherland, E., and Fitzpatrick, R., “Psychotic side effects of psychostimulants: a 5-year review,” Can. J. Psychiatry, Oct. 1999, 44(8):811-13.

[xxxix] Bell, D.S., “The Experimental Reproduction of Amphetamine Psychosis,” Archives of General Psychiatry, July 1973, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 35-45.

[xl] Lipkin, P.H., et al., “Tics and dyskinesias associated with stimulant treatment in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,” Arch. Pediatr. Adolesc. Med., Aug. 1994, 148(8):859-61.

[xli] Gerlach, J., et al., “Methylphenidate, apomorphine, THIP, and diazepam in monkeys…dopamine-GABA behavior related to psychoses and tardive dyskinesia,” Psychopharmacology (Berl.), 1984, 82(1-2): 131-4.

[xlii] Young, J.G., “Methylphenidate-induced hallucinosis: case histories and possible mechanisms of action,” J. Dev. Behav. Pediatr., June 1981, 2(2):35-8.

[xliii] Weiner, W.J., et al., “Methylphenidate-induced chorea: case report and pharmacological implications,” Neurology, Oct. 1978, 28(10): 1041-4.

[xliv] Silver, Larry B., Dr. Larry Silver’s Advice to Parents on Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 189.

[xlv] Taylor, John F., Helping Your Hyperactive/Attention Deficit Child, Prima Publishing, Rocklin, CA, 1994, p. 87.

[xlvi] Sears, William, and Lynda Thompson, The A.D.D. Book: New Understandings, New Approaches to Parenting Your Child, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 1998, p. 235.

[xlvii] Taylor, John F., Helping Your Hyperactive/Attention Deficit Child, Prima Publishing, Rocklin, CA, 1994, p. 91.

[xlviii] Swanson, J.S., et al., “Stimulant medication and the treatment of children with attention deficit disorder: A Review of Reviews,” Exceptional Children, 1993, Vol. 60, pp. 154-61.

[xlix] Gary Null interview with Janet Hall, Feb.13, 2001.

[l] Ibid.

[li] Associated Press, “Ritalin Maker Sued Over Girl’s Death,” The Record (New Jersey), Jan. 9, 2000, p. A-3.

[lii] Gary Null interview with Janet Hall, Feb.13, 2001.

[liii] Gary Null interview with Dr. Dragovic, Feb.13, 2001.

[liv] Ibid.

[lv] Wang, G.J., et al., “Methylphenidate decreases regional cerebral blood flow in normal human subjects,” Life Sci., 1994, 54(9): PL143-6.

[lvi] Suplee, Curt, “Brain not finished developing by age 6, scientists now say,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 9, 2000.

[lvii] Henderson, T.A., and Fischer, V.W., “Effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on mammalian myocardial ultrastructure,” American Journal of Cardiovascular Pathology, 1995, 5(1): 68-78.

[lviii] Gary Null interview with Dr. Fred Baughman, Feb. 12, 2001.

[lix] Gary Null interview with Dr. David Stein, Feb. 13, 2001.

[lx] DeGrandpre, op. cit.

[lxi] Ibid., p. 19.

[lxii] Gary Null interview with Tammy Maria Kabiak, Feb. 12, 2001.

[lxiii] Wexler, Richard, Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims in the War Against Child Abuse, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY 1995.

[lxiv] Gary Null interview with Richard Wexler, Feb. 12, 2001.

[lxv] Ibid. [lxvi] Gary Null interview with Nestor Sosa, Feb. 12, 2001.

[lxvii] Ibid.

[lxviii] Gary Null interview with Patty Johnson, Feb. 13, 2001.

[lxix] Ibid.

[lxx] Daly, Matthew, The Associated Press, Tampa Tribune, July 18, 2001.

[lxxi] Zernike, Kate, and Melody Peterson, “Schools’ Backing of Behavior Drugs Comes Under Fire,” The New York Times, Aug. 19, 2001.

[lxxii] Armstrong, op. cit.

[lxxiii] Ibid., p. xiii.

[lxxiv] Anderson, Nick, “Drugs for Kids Getting Closer Look,” The Record (New Jersey), Mar. 21, 2000, p. A-15.

[lxxv] Robinson, Holly, “Generation Rx,” Parents, Nov. 2001, p. 80.

[lxxvi] Breggin, Peter R., Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Today’s Most Controversial Drug, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994, p. 89.

[lxxvii] Jerome, Laurence, The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Sept. 1991.

[lxxviii] Boseley, Sarah, “Happy drug Prozac can bring on impulse to suicide, study says,” The Guardian (U.K.), May 22, 2000.

[lxxix] “Newest Depression Medications Widely Prescribed for Children,” Pediatric Academic Societies, May 1, 1999.

[lxxx] Breggin, Peter R., Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Today’s Most Controversial Drug, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994, p. 36.

[lxxxi] Ibid., p. 55.

[lxxxii] Gary Null interview with Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Feb. 27, 2001.

[lxxxiii] Ibid.

[lxxxiv] Glenmullen, Joseph, Prozac Backlash, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000.

[lxxxv] Gary Null interview with Brenda, Feb. 27, 2001.

[lxxxvi] Gary Null interview with Robert, Feb. 27, 2001

[lxxxvii] Gary Null interview with Arnel, June 7, 2001.

[lxxxviii] Gary Null interview with Joyce, Feb. 27, 2001.

[lxxxix] Zernike, Kate, and Melody Peterson, “Schools’ Backing of Behavior Drugs Comes Under Fire,” The New York Times, Aug. 19, 2001.

[xc] Ziegler, Nicole, “Recreational Ritalin,” The Associated Press, abcNEWS.com, May 5, 2000.

[xci] Clerman, G., ed., Contemporary Directions in Psychopathology, 1986.