March 14, 2006 at 06:38:26

ADHD Experts Head To Washington - Is the FDA Up To The Task?

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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 4 of 4 page(s)

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"In recent years," Dr Pelham told Alternet, "I have come to believe that the individuals who advocate most strongly in favor of medication - both those from the professional community, including the National Institutes of Mental Health, and those from advocacy groups, including CHADD - have major and undisclosed conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies that deal with ADHD products."

"I believe that parents of ADHD children and the public at large should be made aware of this situation," he told Ms Hearn.

According to Dr Breggin, front groups like CHADD use pharma money in several marketing techniques that increase the sale of drugs. "They put out newsletters and other information that praise medications," he says.

"Sometimes," he notes, "they actively suppress viewpoints that are critical of drugsfor example, by discouraging the media from airing opposing viewpoints."

Representatives of CHADD showed up at the FDA hearings last month and the group will no doubt be out in full force this month ready to go head to head against pharma's number one enemy - the advocacy groups opposed to the mass drugging of children for profit.

By Evelyn Pringle
evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing government corruption)

*Dr Fred Baughman, author of The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children (2004); Dr Peter Breggin, author of a dozen books including Toxic Psychiatry (1994), Talking Back to Ritalin (2001), and The Ritalin Fact Book (2002); Dr Grace Jackson, author of Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent (2005); S DuBose Ravenel, MD, FAAP, one of 34 signers of "A Critique of the International Consensus Statement on ADHD," published in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Vol 7, No 1, March 2004; and David Stein, PhD, author of Stop Medicating, Start Parenting: Real Solutions for Your Problem Teenager (2005), Unraveling The Add/Adhd Fiasco (2002), and Ritalin is Not the Answer (1999).

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