Posted on 12/03/2001 7:38:54 AM PST by dead
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:02:40 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
December 3, 2001 -- The federally funded abuse of children, some as young as 3, has begun in New York City, critics charge.
The alleged torture chambers are located at two city locations where doctors will conduct Ritalin experiments on more than 80 city kids between the ages of 3 and 8.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Take a pill, turn into a zombie.
not every question requires an answer and not every drug requires testing or usage. ritalin is trouble. i wonder what drives parents to let their children partake in such an event?
Fake classrooms with two-way mirrors will be set up to study the kids like lab rats when researchers wean them off Ritalin. The "child's behavior could get worse," the protocol states.
Notwithstanding the ethical problems associated with this study, any study like this that does not clearly differentiate between the well-known behavioral rebound effects of drugs like Ritalin and the child's underlying behavior problem is a sham.
Do ya think we'll see this kind of differentiation? Sure we will. Not.
And it was after a three year struggle where the diagnosis was first depresssion, and then bipolar, and finally bipolar with ADD.
And to top it off, while reading Driven to Distraction to learn about this disorder, stuff started jumping off the page-- not just about my son, but about me as well. (We're both on once-a-day meds now.)
The difference between his performance in school pre and post-med is, on average, two letter grades in each subject.
Perhaps the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD is overused and Ritalin is overused, but there are instances when the results cannot be discounted.
Because, it may not be a real disease but Ritalin is a real drug. If you take a mind altering drug you can expect your mind to be altered. You would see an effect if you took cocaine or LSD or whiskey too.
In this case, Ritalin is prescribed for people with certain behaviors and the drug does have the effect of reducing those behaviors. The issue is, are the behaviors due to a medical condition or are we just drugging people who act in ways we preferred they didn't? I think it is the latter. There is no medical condition that causes ADHD, there are energetic children who lack discipline (among other causes). Drugging them is wrong.
You are quite right. Since my expertise is pharmacokinetics and metabolism, and since the subject here seems to be as much about safety as efficacy, I confined my comments to that area, but the CNS area is one of the hardest in which to do origial (not me-too) pharmacological research.
Children are far more receptive to their fathers than to neurotoxic dopamine agonists at their dopamine receptors.
No other branch of medicine would even dare take 3 years to come up with the "proper" dx.
That's a really good question. I don't think there is anything inherently evil in using drugs to change your state of mind. It depends on circumstances. I get a little buzzed off too much wine sometimes, and that's OK.
I would never deny anyone's right to self-medicate, even if I thought they were wrong. I just disagree with the medicalization of behaviors and I think that belief system does have detrimental effects.
Also, we are starting to hear about the long term effects of Ritalin, and we'll probably learn more about that. Although the parents should be responsible for these decisions, most of them believe what the doctors tell them and think they are treating some disorder.
Amen, dead.
Two years ago, my son, who is now six, was suspected of having ADHD by his preschool teacher. My wife and I immediately suspected otherwise. "He's four," we said. "We have no problems with him at home, and he is getting his first prolonged exposure to other kids."
We ended up having to take him to a nurse, who looked at him for about five minutes and said the notion was ridiculous, to her everlasting credit. She told us that he was four and acting like it from time to time. Naturally, this didn't surprise us at all.
He's the apple of his dad's eye, and a wonderful well-adjusted first-grader.
My personal opinion about ADHD is that as a result of our "expect-it-now" society, when kids actually take time to be kids and exhibit behavior that shows their age, we must assume that something's wrong since their behavior isn't perfect. I know I'm not a scientist and I'm sure others more learned than I might have other opinions, but all I know is they wanted to put my son on Ritalin, they were wrong and I'm glad we stuck to our guns.
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