Ms Barton also says that without medication, other interventions are ineffective, and claims: "This medication does not cause illegal drug use or addiction."
Dr Fred Baughman, author of "The ADHD Fraud - How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children," and one of the nation's leading experts on the issue, vehemently disagrees. He calls the medical practice of ADHD a fraud - "one in which the FDA was fully complicit," he says.
"ADHD doesn't exist--it is not a physical abnormality," he explains, "and as such bears no risk of causing physical injury or death as does every drug used in its treatment," he says.
He also asked the committee to give the reference, or cite the literature, that describes the test that provides objective evidence that children diagnosed with ADHD have a disease.
The silence in the hearing room was deafening. According to Dr Baughman, no one answered the questions because there is no study, test, or scientific literature to back up the assertion that ADHD is a disease.
"ADHD is not a disease," Dr Baughman says. "This being the case," he maintains, "giving such drugs for ADHD is not "help" or "treatment"."
He makes the point "that all practice of medicine begins with diagnosis."
"Informed consent," Dr Baughman explained, "demands not just a description of the drugs or surgery to be used but of the condition they are to be used on--its prognosis and how that natural course/prognosis is likely to be altered by the treatments to be applied."
At the March 2006, FDA advisory committee hearings, it was noted that no other countries are drugging children with stimulants. In fact, psychiatrist, Dr Grace Jackson, who also testified at the hearing, explains in her book, "Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs," how in 1996 and 1997, the World Health Organization issued press releases about the rise in the use of the stimulant, Ritalin, in this country, "noting that the United States was responsible for 90% of the drug's production and consumption."
At the time, the International Narcotics Control Board identified a number of concerns about America's use of the drug, including the dangers of: "inappropriate diagnosis of ADHD; widely divergent prescribing patterns; off-label prescribing to children under six; and excessive duration of treatment," Dr Jackson reports.
A report by the FDA released in February 2006, said that between 1999 and 2003, there were 25 deaths in persons using ADHD drugs, including the deaths of 19 children. The FDA also reported receiving more than 50 cases of cardiovascular problems, including stoke, heart attack, hypertension, palpitations and arrhythmia.
Because only between 1 and 10% of adverse events are ever reported to the FDA, the numbers above represent an extreme understatement of actual cases of harm, critics point out.
According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, there were only 271 Ritalin-related emergency room visits in 1990, but there were 1,478 Ritalin-related emergency visits recorded in 2001.
In 1999, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, found some 165 Ritalin-related poison calls in Detroit and 419 cases in Texas. Of the nearly 600 calls, only 114 cases involved intentional misuse or abuse.
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