truthseeker
The Drugging Agenda Marches On...
Thu Jun 24, 2004 10:05
67.14.223.19

Couldn't agree with you more, Bob. Regarding the Pharmacuetical Drugging of our Youth, you can see that this agenda has been pushed for quite some time. It doesn't matter which Conmen/women are in office, as long as BigpHarm gets its way. The Bush Plan is merely a continuation of this agenda.Corporate Fascism.


A Hill and Tip Trip
By Kelly Patricia O Meara

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=208480

I think that part of what we've got, though, is to reflect how we can both identify and get help to children who need it, whether or not they want it or are willing to accept it," declared first lady and wanna-be junior senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The first lady's comment, put in the context of how to deal with tragedies such as the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., was delivered to a standing-room-only crowd at the June 7, 1999, White House Conference on Mental Health. She was directly advocating the forced drugging of schoolchildren with psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin.

The first lady, however, was not alone in advocating this chilling agenda for dealing with schoolhouse behavioral problems. During the conference that critics dubbed a cheerleading session for the pharmaceutical industry, the president's top mental-health adviser and candidate for first lady, Tipper Gore, joined in leading the psychopharmacological charge. In fact, nodding to Tipper, President Clinton told the mesmerized crowd: "She knows more and cares more about this issue than anyone else I personally know."

[...]


Members of the opposing team, which include a growing number of well-respected physicians who have spent their lives resisting subjective diagnoses of mental illnesses, are astonished by such pronouncements. They tell Insight they would jump at the opportunity to present their contrary data from such a highly visible platform as the well-publicized Clinton-Gore White House conference but were not invited to offer opposing research. Instead, the spotlight was given to Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH.

[...]


To psychiatrist Peter Breggin, founder and international director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (www.Breggin.com), or ICSPP, a Maryland-based research and educational network, and author of a dozen books, including Talking Back to Ritalin, Talking Back to Prozac and Reclaiming Our Children, Hyman's slide show was just that - a show. "Physicians and researchers like Hyman are guilty of the PET-scan scam," says Breggin. "They compare the brains of people who are diagnosed with something like Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, or depression with people who don't have these diagnoses. They then claim to the gullible audience that there is a discernible difference in the brains." According to Breggin, "There is no known difference in the brains of any patient with a psychiatric diagnosis, nor is there any difference with the mythical biochemical imbalance. In fact, we have no instrument for even measuring such an imbalance. When there are differences in brain scans between two individuals they sometimes are caused by psychiatric-drug use and other times represent normal variation. No reputable physician would ever claim to be able to diagnose a psychiatric problem from a brain scan."

[...]


The controversy surrounding the use of psychotropic drugs on children began after the diagnosis for ADD/ADHD was voted into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IIIR, in 1987. The prescription of Ritalin (methyl-phenidate), a highly addictive stimulant categorized as a Schedule II drug by the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA, skyrocketed from less than a quarter of a million in 1986 to 6 million today. Certainly it is unlikely that Clinton-Gore psychiatric spokesmen Hyman and Koplewicz were unaware that Ritalin is pharmacologically similar to cocaine in its pattern of abuse, given that red flags were raised years ago by the World Health Organization, or WHO, the DEA and even the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Within the year since Insight began reporting on this issue, not only are many mental-health experts questioning the overuse of psychotropic drugs on children but also the validity of the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-IV, as it continues to broaden the circle of mental illness to include practically every child, with the implication that pharmacology offers a quick solution. For example, in the January 2000 issue of Clinical Psychiatry News, respondents were asked to evaluate the psychiatric diagnoses presented in the DSM-IV. The result was dramatic. "The DSM-IV has gone too far. There are too many diagnoses without any objective basis or biological support," said Houston psychiatrist Theodore Pearlman. "There has never been any criterion that psychiatric diagnoses require a demonstrated biological etiology," said Harold Pincus, vice chairman of the DSM-IV task force.

[...]

While it is insulting to many physicians who are aware of the fraud that is being perpetrated in the name of treating mental illness for men in positions of extreme power to continue to push the strict pharmacological line, this has been endemic in the Clinton-Gore administration. David Satcher, the U.S. surgeon general, is a case in point.

[...]

Not everyone is buying the Clinton administration line. In mid-May a class-action lawsuit was filed in Dallas for alleged fraud and conspiracy in overpromoting the stimulant medication Ritalin. Three national defendants are named: Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp. (formerly Ciba Geigy), the manufacturer of Ritalin; CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), a parent's organization that is partially funded by drug companies; and the APA. Among the allegations: The drug company "deliberately, intentionally, and negligently promoted the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and sales of Ritalin through its promotional literature." The lawsuit also charges the drug company with "actively supporting groups such as Defendant CHADD, both financially and with other means, so that such organizations would promote and support the ever- increasing implementation of the ADD/ADHD diagnosis as well as directly increasing Ritalin sales." And the lawsuit further claims that "Defendant American Psychiatric Association conspired, colluded and cooperated with the other Defendants" while taking "financial contributions from Ciba Geigy as well as other members of the pharmaceutical industry."

Andy Waters of the Dallas law firm of Waters and Kraus, www.RitalinFraud.com, is lead attorney for the plaintiffs. He tells Insight that "the nature of the lawsuit is for consumer fraud. The legal concept is the unholy alliance of the psychiatrists, manufacturers and parents groups that have combined to create a diagnosis that didn't exist and create and accelerate an enormous market for Ritalin. My sincere hope is that 60 to 90 days from now we'll have a judge ordering the defendants to release information. I think we will find that Novartis was involved in the making of the diagnosis - it's just too close a connection to rule it out." Meanwhile, a growing number of members of state boards of education, state legislatures and the U.S. Congress have been taking action to stop the tidal wave of psychotropic drugs being prescribed for children under the guise of public health. New York, New Jersey, Idaho, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Georgia, Colorado, Arizona and Pennsylvania have passed or have legislation pending that confronts the issue of widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs to school-age children. Legislative topics include examining the impact of psychotropic drugs, prohibiting school personnel from recommending or discussing medications for schoolchildren, requiring pharmacists to disclose the potentially addictive nature of psychotropic drugs and preventing any school official from requiring that children be placed on psychotropic drugs as a condition for remaining in school.

Back at the White House conference, however, the solution to the violence confronting America's youth -the Hillary-Tipper answer to the psychotropic-drug epidemic - was more drugging.


More:

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=208480

• Ecstasy, Immigration, And THE DRUG — Marcus Epstein, Thu Jun 24 10:58