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.
Let me try this again.
My point, that being that if Baughman is a scientologist then his opinion is rightfully suspect, is based on what I know of scientology, NOT Dr. Baughman.
He could be a rocket scientist for all I know, and frankly, I don't care what his credentials are. My point remains, regardless if we're talking about an accredited neurologist or Tom Cruise.
IF (I don't know and I don't care to search to find out) the good dr is a scientologist, he loses credibility based on the utter lack of such in a religion that believes that housed in and around each one of us are alien souls that were stashed around volcanos and blown up with hydrogen bombs by some intergalactic ruler named Xenu 75 million years ago, a religion that is rumoured to have been created out of whole cloth based on a bet between a science fiction author and his occultist friend, a religion that by many accounts effectively fleeces its followers out of countless millions each year.
Again, to reiterate, my point is based on what I know of scientology, not Dr. Baughman. If the man has no direct association or membership in the COS, his opinions carry just a bit more weight than otherwise.
I have done a great deal of research and writing on this subject, and you are right - the studies and data aren’t there. Periodically reports appear in the MSM that that the genetic basis of ADHD has been identified or that clear physical markers have been found. A little digging, however, reveals that the MSM is exaggerating what the researchers are claiming or that the study was obviously flawed (The Castellanos study and the reporting on it incorporated both of these phenomena).
Unfortunately most people (and I was like that before I started investigating) tend to assume that because of the many well funded “prestigious” voices on the side of ADHD industry that there must at least be some arguable basis for their views. Unfortunately, what is actually happening is a vast, uncontrolled pharmacological experiment - mainly on children - that is driven by careerism, agendas, money, but not much science. Worst of all, no one has any idea what the long term consequences to children are of giving them psychiatric meds.