I read the article. Didn’t do any in-depth research into the merits of Dr. Baughman though. My point was simply this - IF he is a scientologist, it can be rightly claimed that his opinion is tainted.
Speaking of factual basis, seems that Rebecca Riley’s case involved just a bit more than her being given psychiatric drugs.
That said, I think ADHD is WAY overdiagnosed and as a homeschooling mom, I shudder to think what teachers might dispense to my crazy six year old. But to consider all psychiatric ailments as non-biological is frightening as well.
Not if you do your research.
Why do many assume that someone’s assertions are “tainted” without even looking into it below surface level ?
Here, I’ll help you out...
http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol38i/page30.htm
“Interviewer: I’m not a doctor or a neurologist. But I know I will talk to doctors who tell me that, 70 percent of the time, they’re confronted with symptoms, and we don’t find biological markers before diagnosis or prescription.
Baughman:There are a lot of ... busy family practitioners, busy pediatricians, busy general internists, who, under the pressure of time, do make diagnoses and do prescribe, based primarily on history. But when it comes to diagnosing something that’s serious—and if we’re talking something abnormal about a child’s brain or something abnormal about an adult’s brain—that has lifelong consequences. A diagnosis of ADHD, most psychiatrists will tell you, is going to require lifelong psychotropic medication, usually Schedule II control psychostimulants, amphetamines, of which Ritalin is one. That’s an extraordinarily serious diagnosis. ...”
or this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/interviews/baughman.html
“Baughman:You’ve got to demonstrate the characteristic confirmatory physical abnormality before you obligate that patient to lifelong treatment. I can suspect diabetes based on the history, but I’ve got to confirm it. I’ve got to know whether the blood sugar is 420 or 800. ... I can’t ever start insulin treatment or any oral anti-diabetic treatment without confirmatory evidence.”
or how about this for being discredited by association:
“Interviewer:But the charge that the psychiatrists and the pharmaceuticals have joined together in a joint common mercenary interest is quite a charge. How can you say that?
Baughman:I’m not the only one saying this. In October 1995, in the DEA background paper on methylphenidate, which is Ritalin, the DEA says that they have been contacted by the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), that had expressed concern about the financial ties of Ciba-Geigy, then the manufacturer of Ritalin, to CHADD. They noted that CHADD had received over $775,000 from Ciba-Geigy, I think up through 1994, and eventually the figure went over $1 million. The INCB charged CHADD with being a vehicle for marketing a controlled substance directly to the public in violation of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971, and international statute by which all countries, all signatories, agreed.
Ciba-Geigy confessed at that point that CHADD was their conduit to the public. CHADD personnel and NIMH personnel were regularly in-house at the Department of Education office of Special Education authoring ADHD materials. I think CHADD made a grant, I believe, of $700,000-some to the Office of Special Education to make a video about ADHD. Then when John Merrow, in his video production in about 1995 ... pointed out the financial ties between the Ritalin manufacturer, Ciba-Geigy and CHADD, I think that money was then given back by the Department of Education, back to CHADD. “
Search is your friend, my friend.