Posted on 12/06/2004 1:02:52 PM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative
Celebrities, Parents, Legislators and Civil Rights Groups Win Victory for Children's Rights with Passage of the "Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment"
Los Angeles - Celebrities Lisa Marie Presley, Kelly Preston, Kirstie Alley, Jenna Elfman and Juliette Lewis joined the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog established by the Church of Scientology, in applauding Congress for passing precedent-setting legislation that bans school personnel forcing parents to drug their children for classroom or behavioral problems. In order to receive federal funds under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), the "Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment," was signed into law by President Bush today and requires schools to implement policies that prohibit schoolchildren being forced onto psychiatric drugs as a requisite for their education.
Hundreds of parents across America have been pressured to put their school-aged children onto cocaine-like stimulants or antidepressants for which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just ordered a "black box label" warning of the drugs' high risk of causing suicide among children and adolescents. Ms. Kelly Preston, who met with members of Congress in June last year to enlist support of the amendment, said, "Every mother has an inherent right to protect her child from harm. However, many mothers have been denied that right because psychiatrists have inundated unwitting teachers with the false opinion that educational and behavioral problems are symptoms of 'mental disorders' that require mind-altering drugs. This law gives hope for a new era in education, one where teachers are free to work with parents to find academic solutions instead of unworkable and harmful psychiatric treatments that benefit no one but the psychiatric industry."
Many groups supported the amendment, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Foundation of Women Legislators (NFWL), Parents for a Label and Drug Free Education, as well as numerous state and federal legislators.
Bruce Wiseman, the U.S. President of CCHR says, "Psychiatrists did not want to let go of their stronghold of American schools and launched massive counter efforts to kill this legislation. However, people are waking up to the fact that psychiatric 'mental disorders' have absolutely no scientific/medical validity and that psychiatrists falsely portray them as a disease or physical condition to convince teachers and parents that these are medical issues, which is a complete fraud. Psychiatric 'disorders' are simply checklists of behaviors‹symptoms presumed to be related‹and voted by members of the American Psychiatric Association to be included in their insurance billing bible, the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This has been used to justify the administration of dangerous drugs to more than 8 million children. Parents and teachers were never informed about documented side effects of many of these drugs, including suicide, violence, mania and psychosis."
CCHR says the next step in educational reform is to remove psychiatric and psychological testing and screening from schools which are the feeder lines to psychiatrists who have made turning schools into mental health clinics a business. Millions of students are now dependent upon psychiatric drugs or are taking them illegally. CCHR, joined by scores of parents and civil rights groups, say the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health's recommendations for mandatory mental health screening in school is a frightening representation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in which Huxley describes a controlled "utopian" civilization achieved with the "technique of suggestion‹through infant conditioning and, later, with the aid of drugs." While the "Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment" will help prevent some of psychiatry's propensity to drug all normal childhood behavior, many charge that the spurious sounding "Freedom Commission on Mental Health" and its recommendations will open another door to dangerous conditioning leading to massive increases in psychotropic drugging of a new generation.
Dr. Julian Whitaker, director of California's Whitaker Wellness Center warns that the motive behind mandatory mental health screening of children is obvious: "That means drugging them!" For psychiatry, this means, "52 million potential customers." He offers this advice to parents: "First of all, refuse to sign those consent forms when they come home from your child's school‹if they can't test them, they can't drug them."
CCHR will monitor the implementation of this law so that any parent who may still experience coercion to drug their child can contact CCHR to report this and for assistance.
There have been cases where Scientology has held members captive in forced re-indoctrination situations, when they were trying to leave the group, and made them very ill in the process. At least one woman died this way.
As was the case with Lisa McPherson and many others.
Several, actually. See http://www.whyaretheydead.net/ for details.
According to the Bill of Rights, our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, either. That hasn't exactly slowed down the Liberals or their RINO littermates.
"The fact that such a law was needed is frightening."
You can bet the teacher's union had it's grubby little hand in this. All they want is money, a job they can't be fired from or held accountable for, and for your kid to just sit there and watch the TV. If your kid makes a fuss, drug him/her into submission.
I think you are on the short list for a middle-of-the-night door-kicking visit from John Travolta.
I'm sure your right...the establishment of this cult is also extremely interesting....Being a Christian conservative... I would never step into teachings by the many cults throughout America and the world. Many have hooks not easily eliminated.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
So if the Church of Scientology endorsed the Republican party you would vote Democrat? Why don't you try thinking on your own instead of letting your enemies decide what or who you support?
Our middle son was a "high maintenance" baby and was unhappy unless he was doing whatever big sister was doing. In kindergarten, he would spin around in his seat at school when he was done before everyone else and got bored. But his private school didn't punish - they asked if we would send some quiet things for him to do when he wasn't able to run outside right away. Now, he's a busy teen getting "A"s (except in English, just like his father) and playing plenty of sports. He is constantly tossing some kind of ball in the air everywhere he goes - getting on his mother's nerves occasionally. He loves baseball and we make him play all the rest. He doesn't like soccer or basketball but we insist he play anyway. After a few mumbles, as soon as a ball enters the field of play, he's all over it.
It's a shame so many kids are not able to get outside and the ones who can are usually inside sitting around instead and are allowed to sit and eat processed carbs all afternoon.
I hate peeing in the cheerios, here, but this is pretty meaningless when we have the New Freedom Commission recomendations coupled with a federal bureaucracy like SAMSHA to implement those recommendations. This won't be mandatory, at first. Nothing will change except the funding in 2006, 2007, and on, and SAMSHA will grow in power. In ten years no one will remember the word "mandatory" just as parents now are forgetting the state cannot "force" their children on drugs. They can make life hell for you and intensely pressure if you refuse, but they can't force anything.
IF anything a power vacuum is created here and guess who gets to fill it? The best thing would be for the feds to get OUT of the schools altogether, but that will never happen. Once a federal program is enacted, no matter how small at first, it takes on a life of its own and becomes immortal.
JMO. I do applaud the CCHR for their efforts, though. And I hope to hell I am wrong.
However, what the schools do is refuse to allow the child to attend school unless they agree to take the drugs. Then, the parents are liable for not sending their children to compulsory education, unless they then homeschool them.
This is a good thing. Many borderline kids, especially boys, have been forced into ritalin or related drugs, just because the system didn't want to deal with kids being kids.
Now, my son needs them. He is clearly ADHD, and feels better about himself with them than without them (although we did take him off ritalin for a couple of years because the side effects weren't worth the results.)
But if a school system told me they were going to turn me over to the local child welfare people because I decided to take him off the meds, I would have been very, very angry and unhappy. It can be hard to find what works right when you have kids with these types of problems, and it shouldn't be something to be figured out between the school that wants to manage people and the children's welfare people. It should be something that the medical people and parents work out instead. And it often takes time, trial and error, and working with different strategies.
How dare the schools think that their desire to keep kids under wraps instead of letting them be kids gives them the right to play with powerful, sometimes addictive medications for their convenience!
I believe this was buried in the reauthorization of IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which pays for a portion of Special Eduation in schools.
those are Christian scientists. I think it's a different sect altogether. They don't allow blood transfusions either.
My daughter in law was told that my grandson Andrew was ADD. She was furious with them because he could sit for hours at home and play quietly. The diagnosis didn't fit. He was too intelligent to sit in a classroom where the work was too simple. They put him in the library so he could read the encyclopedias. She got tired of it and home schooled him. He's very bright and is tops in his Bible Scripture learning team. I'm learning to hate public school and the crap that goes on with our most precious possessions.
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