Rob: Alright let's talk a little bit about this situation where kids are put on stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall...I'm assuming those are the ones you're referring to. What was the one that was used in the study?
RW: That's a good question. It might have been Ritalin...it might have been methylphenidate. I think that's what it was, but...oh you're talking about the MTA study...I'm not 100 percent sure -- it could have been one of the newer stimulants...I'm not 100 percent sure.
Rob: Okay, but what you're saying is that the percentage...what's the percentage of kids that are becoming bipolar after being put on this?
RW: Somewhere between 10 and 25 percent.
Rob: And...10 and 25 percent, so if there are 2 million kids on stimulants then we're talking about 200 to 500 thousand kids becoming bipolar after being put on stimulants.
RW: That's correct.
Rob: Well, people who argue that these kids had the potential, these kids were at risk for bipolar anyway...what is the response to that?
RW: Well, you know, they'll say this -- that they were comorbid for bipolar all along and science has made this great leap forward and now they're diagnosing this disease that didn't used to get diagnosed as if they've discovered this...you know, the disease was present all the time. I mean, this is just complete and utter nonsense. Listen, if you look at, say, prior to the use of stimulants were kids getting diagnosed with bipolar illness...say kids younger than 13, 14, prepubertal kids? Well if you go into the medical literature, you'll find that researchers would say -- we just do not see kids with bipolar symptoms, we just do not see kids that have...that go from depression to mania -- we just don't see it...okay...it doesn't exist. Then you follow forward the discovery of bipolar illness. The first, sort of, case studies appear in the late 1970s...I think it's late 1976 at Washington University and this guy says -- aha, I've discovered that kids can become bipolar. This is the beginning of this discovery process. Well then you look and you find that nearly all the kids in his case studies, in fact, have been on either stimulants or antidepressants. In other words...
Rob: What's his name again?
RW: Pardon me?
Rob: You mentioned a specific person who was involved in this. Who was the researcher who did this?
RW: God, I forget...I apologize...
Rob: Is it Biederman?
RW: What's that?
Rob: Biederman?
RW: Well yeah, Biederman is the one who eventually really popularizes it; and so what happens is if you trace this history in 76 you see these case studies, and then you see...I think at the MGH in 1979 where they've got "11 bipolar kids for the first time." And they actually come up with this very idea that the drugs, the stimulants, because the kids have been exposed to stimulants are unmasking bipolar in these kids. Well, the point is before we were using the stimulants kids weren't...there was no unmasking going on -- we weren't getting the bipolar kids.
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