06/12/2000

A Hill and Tip Trip

By Kelly Patricia O’Meara

omeara@insightmag.com

This Clinton-Gore team advocates identifying

schoolchildren as mentally ill and requiring them to

take psychotropic drugs to control any inattentive

behavior.

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 Col-umbine 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."

The vice president’s wife "knows more" about this issue?

Beyond earning a masters’ degree in psychology more than 20 years

ago and having been treated for depression, say critics, Gore’s

knowledge of mental illness is limited at best and misinformed at

worst. For example, Gore displayed some of her knowledge on this

subject during the president’s weekly radio address to the nation just

before the White House conference when she announced that

Americans must change their attitudes and "dispel the myths about

mental illness once and for all." She said, "One of the most widely

believed, and most damaging, myths is that mental illness is a personal

failure, not a physical disease ... and we are learning that many mental

disorders are biological in nature and can be medically treated."

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.

Hyman pulled a slide show out of his black bag and wowed the

star-struck crowd with his evidence that, indeed, mental illness is a

"real disorder of the brain." To prove his point, Hyman said, "I

brought a few pictures" because "I think pictures are worth an awful

lot. I just want to show you a picture that is somewhat alarming. What

we see here on the left is a healthy person with a normal brain, and

then on the right, someone who has had severe depression for a long

time. What you see outlined in red at the bottom is that a key

structure acquired from memory actually gets smaller. It deteriorates if

depression is not treated."

Apparently caught up in the frenzy of breakthrough medical

"proof" of mental illness, the audience broke into enthusiastic

applause.

Hyman’s slide show was nothing if not deeply flawed, the most

basic omission being a failure to present the case history of the

subject shown in the slides. For instance, during Hyman’s show not

once did he mention whether the patient on the right, who "had severe

depression" and whose slide showed "red at the bottom" had been

given psychotropic drugs for any length of time prior to capturing the

brain on film. In fact, if this were the case, critics tell Insight, the

right-brain slides, rather than being reflective of a scientific

breakthrough supporting the premise that the depression caused the

mental illness, would support arguments made by opponents that the

change in the brain in fact was caused by prescribed psychotropic

medication.

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."

Harold Koplewicz, the vice-chairman of the department of

psychiatry at the New York University Medical Center, an invited

guest speaker at the White House conference, even went beyond the

contention that mental illnesses are brain disorders. Koplewicz said,

"Essentially, these diseases are no-fault brain disorders. They are

familial, they run in families and they have predictable onset and

course." The doctor presented no data to support such interesting

remarks but "essentially" waived any personal responsibility or

validation that such life experiences as mental distress or anxiousness

might be normal.

Since such problems are physical, and beyond personal control

or remedy, Koplewicz reasons, tragedies such as what occurred in

Littleton are "most probably preventable" as a matter of public health.

"Normal children," he continued, "just don’t snap and go out on a

shooting spree. Children who commit violent crimes almost always

have histories of violence, depression or other mental-health

problems. The problem is we have never really looked at the

underlying cause of all this violence — which is childhood psychiatric

illness."

So what was going on there? Apparently "looking at all the

possible underlying causes" of school-age violence — the announced

reason for the Hillary-Tipper conference — was not on the agenda.

Making a statement about the 6 million children being "treated" for

ADHD with highly addictive stimulants, including Ritalin, did not fit

that bill. Nor did even one of the distinguished speakers raise the

issue first reported last year by Insight [see "Guns & Doses," June

28, 1999], faxed to the White House before the conference, revealing

the dramatic connection between the then five most recent school

shootings: All the accused shooters had been treated with

psychotropic drugs, including Ritalin, Luvox and Prozac.

It would not be long before the New York Times, the

Washington Post and national weekly newsmagazines were following

Insight’s lead, but when the Hillary-Tipper team had the chance to

recognize the problem quickly and in prime time they demurred.

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 in-clude

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.

To indicate how far from reality are the advocates of passing out

pills in the schools, it is noteworthy that Hyman apparently was not

even communicating with his colleagues at the American Academy of

Pediatrics, or AAP. All of the new AAP guidelines for diagnosing

ADHD, like those listed in the DSM-IV — for example, exhibiting

behaviors such as not listening when spoken to directly, failing to

follow directions, losing things, being forgetful and easily distracted

and fidgeting with hands or feet — are subjective observations on the

part of the treating physician. However, after listing the new

guidelines, the AAP concludes that "other diagnostic tests, sometimes

considered positive indicators for ADHD, have been reviewed and

considered not effective [emphasis added]. These tests include lead

screening, tests for generalized resistance to thyroid hormone, and

brain image studies [emphasis added]."

In other words, the dog-and-pony show that Hyman put on for

the first and second ladies was not based in science, and the AAP is

just another in a long list of experts to refute such fraudulent claims.

Hyman also was contradicting his own remarks made earlier in a

New York Times article when he said, "Magnetic Resonance

Imaging, or MRIs, produce scientifically meaningless pretty pictures

which are essentially reminiscent of phrenology. Who knows where

or when the much-sought answers will emerge?"

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.

Fred Baughman, a pediatric neurologist dedicated to exposing

fraudulent medical diagnoses of mental illnesses, took the surgeon

general to task for what Baughman called Satcher’s "attempt to

represent mental disorders as actual diseases." In response to a

first-ever Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Illness, made public in

December 1999, just months after the Columbine shooting tragedy,

Baughman wrote to the nation’s top medicine man asking, "Why have

you chosen to be the first-ever Surgeon General to issue a report on

mental health? As I have shown, it has little or nothing to do with

medical science, bona fide diseases or epidemics. Have other factors

motivated you? You might have ad-dressed the biggest, most heinous

epidemic of all, that of mandating Ritalin and other addictive,

dangerous, even deadly amphetamines for 5-6 million entirely normal

American children, as ‘treatment’ for the wholly fraudulent psychiatric

‘disease’ ADHD."

Baughman concluded his letter: "Your role in this deception and

victimization is clear. Whether you are a physician so unscientific that

you cannot read their contrived ‘neurobiologic’ literature and see the

fraud, or whether you see it and choose to be an accomplice — you

should resign."

Loren Mosher, a psychiatrist and 30-year member of the

American Psychiatric Association, or APA, resigned from the

organization over the blatant infiltration of pharmaceutical money now

permeating the organization and concurs with Baughman about the

surgeon general’s mental health report. Mosher tells Insight that "the

report is a joke." He says, "There are no tests for these so-called

mental diagnoses. You can’t do that with psychiatric diagnoses."

Regardless of the continual stream of articles from reputable

physicians contradicting the biochemical advocacy being pushed by

the administration, Satcher, Hyman and Koplewicz have been

elevated in stature and now are considered foremost authorities on

psychiatric public health, greatly due to the platform provided by the

nation’s first and second ladies. Now the first lady has announced a

$5 million research grant for Hyman’s NIMH to study the effects of

psychotropic drugs on children under the age of 7.

"Hillary is promoting young children to take psychiatric drugs,"

says Breggin. "This is the most extreme Big Brother, Nineteen

Eighty-Four kind of national policy. It has empowered NIMH to do

something that they never would have done — that is to spend $5

million on clinical trials involving hundreds of preschool children. In

the past, NIMH would have been afraid of doing such dangerous,

unethical and unscientific research. The repercussions are going to be

worse because this will now encourage the Food and Drug

Administration, or FDA, to accept similar clinical trials done on very

young children with Ritalin of a sort that have shown disastrous effects

leading to the discontinuation of use in most cases."

For David Oaks, coordinator of Support Coalition International,

an Oregon-based organization representing 80 groups working for

mental-health rights, the first lady’s research announcement was a

warning shot over the bow. Oaks is alarmed by what he considers the

push to medicate. "There is no safety anywhere," he tells Insight. "The

forced administration of drugs is definitely going up. Nearly 40 states

have laws where they have forced-drugging in your own home. Out

of the White House conference came the endorsement of the

Program of Assertive Community Treatment, or PACT. That’s the

teeth of the outpatient forced-drugging: at-home drug delivery, where

they will come to your home every day if necessary for medication

compliance. Drugging is the be-all and end-all."

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. In fact, the

first and second ladies exercised all their mental-health resources to

try to convince the nation that mental illnesses are "real illnesses of the

brain" and "should be treated the same as physical illness." This

would mean, of course, that public-health authorities should have the

right to examine every American child for mental illness as a matter of

public health — and diagnose and treat them pharmacologically in

whatever way they choose.

Regardless of the fact that there simply are no data to support

such claims, the president praised his wife and mental-health guru —

the person "who knows more and cares more," Mrs. Gore, for the

"truly remarkable experience." The White House conference was, to

the president, "stimulating, moving and humbling," because "it’s so

real."

Then, under the guise of exercising presidential authority, Clinton

in-structed the nation’s largest private insurer, the Federal Employee

Health Benefit Plan, to provide full parity for mental and physical

health. He directed the Health Care Finance Administration to

encourage states to better coordinate mental-health services, and he

called for medication targeted at people with the most serious mental

disorders who rely on Medicaid. And, to wind up his mental-health

giveaway, the president announced that he had requested the largest

increase in history — some $70 million — "to help provide more

mental-health services."

Tipper Gore did not respond to questions Insight faxed to her

office and Hillary Clinton’s communications director refused Insight’s

request for an interview, saying, "We’re going to pass on providing

comments to your questions." So one only can imagine the kind of

mental-health programs those ladies will be working for should Hillary

be elected to the Senate and Tipper take over as first lady. As for the

need to profile, diagnose and dope America’s schoolchildren to

assure their mental health, well, the Clinton-Gore psychiatrists have

proved how much children "need" it — "whether or not they want it

or are willing to accept it."