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Bernard
S. Alpert, MD, President
January 4, 2002 Medical
Board of California (MBC) 1426
Howe Ave. Sacramento,
CA 95825-3236 Re:
My presentation/letter to the MBC of November 3, 2001 Dear
President Alpert, and All Members of the MBC, At
the November 3, 2001, session of the MBC, in San Diego, I reported a
crime: the representation, throughout
psychiatry and ‘mental health,’ of
psychiatric/psychological/emotional/behavioral, conditions/diagnoses to be
actual diseases—brain diseases, when none
are. Millions of entirely normal,
infants, children and adults, in California and across the US, are labeled
‘abnormal’/ ‘diseased’/‘medical patients’ and are ‘treated’ with drugs—often,
known substances of addiction. This was a public accusation of documented,
widespread, physician fraud in California, and throughout the nation. It
is the responsibility of the Medical Board of California (MBC) to investigate,
expose, and refer for criminal prosecution, all such cases. Instead, the MBC has remained silent in the
face of these documented accusations. If I
were to invent ‘diseases’ out of thin air and tell normal, disease-free,
infants, children and adults that they were abnormal/diseased, for profit only,
I would be committing a fraud. Any
subsequent medical or surgical treatment would be an assault and battery
pursuant to Penal Code sections 242/243.
The
only difference here, is that present-day psychiatry/‘mental health’ has made
the wholesale invention of ‘diseases,’ it is standard practice. That such has become standard practice does
nothing to legitimize or mitigate the fact that it is a total, 100%,
fraud. Every patient/parent with a
psychological/psychiatric/emotional/behavioral problem who is lead to believe
they have an organic disease of the brain has been lied to and denied their
right to informed consent/self determination.
This being the case the MBC cannot decline to investigate and provide a
determination as to whether or not their proclamations and insinuations of
‘disease’ are legitimate or fraudulent! The
lay-public does not fully understand that an objective, physical abnormality,
equals pathology, equals disease. They
can only trust, and believe what their physicians tell them. Violating that trust, cost-is-no-object,
psychopharm propaganda, bombards them with images of ‘chemical
imbalances’—psychiatry’s ‘diseases,’ and
‘chemical balancers’—pills, to treat them all. Patients and parents cannot bring themselves to imagine so total,
and brazen a deception. Without the
contrived illusion of a disease, there would be no six-million-case, ADHD
‘epidemic.’ One
Parent Not Fooled In
an article entitled “ I'll be damned if I let a psychiatrist near my son,” Wall
Street Journal editor, [WSJ—Online, Tuesday, August 21, 2001], Tunku
Varadarajan writes: “… Lawmakers in some states…have introduced bills
that would prohibit schoolteachers from playing shrink … by telling parents
that they must put their children on drugs to combat "attention
deficit." Such instruction, the
bills declare, must only come from doctors… What stops this legislative pattern
from being excellent news, however, is that the doctors can't be trusted. After
all, it was they who invented ADD and foisted it on a generation of American
children.” While
misrepresentations as to the addiction potential and dangers, of drugs—always
arguable--may constitute an abrogation of informed consent—it is the
representation of ADHD and all psychiatric and mental conditions/diagnoses, to
be “diseases” due to abnormalities-“chemical imbalances” that is an absolute lie and the ubiquitous,
lynch-pin of the fraud. While the
relative dangers of drugs can always be debated, all physicians know, and are
medically and legally responsible for knowing--and determining--that only the
finding/demonstration of an objective physical or chemical abnormality
constitutes a disease. The
Family Circle Psycho/Pharm “Special Advertising Feature” In a
"special advertising feature" in the November 20, 2001, Family Circle
magazine, mental health leaders, including Richard K. Harding, President of the
American Psychiatric Association (APA), and Surgeon General, David Satcher,
cast aside the equivocal term "disorders" and proclaimed that they
diagnose and treat "diseases"—“brain diseases.” In
his essay, “Unlocking the Brain’s Secrets”, Harding, speaking for all organized
psychiatry (APA), states: “We now know that mental illnesses—such as
depression or schizophrenia—are not “moral weaknesses” or “imagined” but real diseases caused by abnormalities of
brain structure and imbalances of chemicals in the brain.” Harding
knows full-well there is no proven abnormality of the brain to make either
depression or schizophrenia, a disease.
This is a lie for public consumption.
In
“About Depression in Women,” Nada L Stotland, MD, MPH, Professor, Department of
Psychiatry, Rush Medical College, Chicago, writes: Depression, the disease—often called “clinical
depression—isn’t feeling ‘down’…Depression
is associated with changes in brain chemistry and tends to run in families. Circumstances play a major role for some
people…More serious depression, or depression that is quickly getting worse,
should be treated with medication.
Antidepressants are not ‘uppers’ and they have no effect on normal
mood. They restore the brain chemistry to normal…No woman needs to suffer from
this terrible disease. Here,
Stotland, who should be beholden to science, not industry, states depression is
a ‘disease,’ a ‘terrible disease’ with ‘changes in brain chemistry.’ All lies.
Two
pages are devoted to the antidepressant, Paxil. We encounter not only
endorsements of the drug itself, but the ubiquitous claim that a new disease
exists, for which to prescribe it—GAD—Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It is not enough to “be” anxious any longer,
now one “has” GAD: Paxil, the most prescribed medication of its kind
for generalized anxiety, works to correct the chemical imbalance believed to cause the disorder. Next
in the “special advertising feature” is none other than Surgeon General, David
Satcher, declaring: “Childhood is a time of great change and adjustment
and the range of “normal” thoughts, emotions, and behaviors is wide.” Here,
the Surgeon General says that just as there are “normal thoughts, emotions, and
behaviors” in childhood--there are abnormal
thoughts, emotions, and behaviors--psychiatric
“diseases”! In the first ever
Surgeon General's report on mental health, in December, 1999, Satcher,
declared: Mental illness is no different than diabetes, asthma
or other physical ailments … Mental
illnesses are physical illnesses, evidenced by changes in brain chemicals and
other physical causes… I called for Satcher’s resignation [PR
Newswire, 2/11/00] stating: …you put the
considerable weight of your office behind representing the scientifically
unproven 'disorders' of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical cartel to be actual
'diseases.' Satcher
ends his “editorial” urging that we pass parity legislation for mental
health. So doing, psychiatry asks us to
accept that all things mental are diseases, as surely as diabetes, cancer,
coronary artery disease, epilepsy, etc.
Satcher should be subpoenaed, sworn, and made to divulge his ties to
industry. Psychiatrist,
Timothy E. Wilens, of Harvard, a leading ADHD “expert” writes: “The disorder (ADHD) is related to an inadequate supply of chemical messengers (neurotransmitters)
of the nerve cells in specific regions of
the brain related to attention, activity inhibitions and mental
operations.” Here
again is the big ‘lie.’ Repeated often
enough, anyone can be made to believe anything, and psychiatry knows it. On
the heels of the Wilen’s essay, is a
two-page ad for Metadate, a new, extended release form of methylphenidate/
Ritalin. Between 1990 and 2000 there
were 186 deaths from methylphenidate
reported to the FDA MedWatch program, a voluntary reporting scheme, the
numbers of which represent no more than
10 to 20% of the actual incidence. Government
Complicity at Every Level Children
and adults throughout California and across the country are told they have
"brain diseases"/ "chemical imbalances", when, in fact,
they are entirely normal. They are made
into ‘medical patients’ even though they have no medical diseases. Thus deceived, they are labeled, drugged,
shocked, restrained, and institutionalized against their will. Parents who resist are deemed "negligent"
/"unfit" and have their children taken from them and put up for
adoption, also in the name of "medical diagnosis and treatment." Exactly how many California children and
parents this has happened to, I cannot be sure, but millions of parents across
the US, including parents of divorce, have suffered ‘custody relinquishment’ of
one degree or another to allow the psychiatric ‘diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’ of
their child to proceed, unhampered. Diane
Booth of Las Gatos, California, one such parent, presently seeks refugee status
in Canada, in hopes of one day seeing her 7 year-old son again. As is standard across California and the US,
Diane’s son, Vincent was deemed ADHD/ diseased/chemically imbalanced/ and in
need of a ‘chemical balancer’—Ritalin--by public school personnel,
psychiatrists/physicians, child protective service social workers and a local
judge—all speaking as if with one voice—which, of course, they do. Diane—the
only parent in Vincent’s life, had the temerity to question the validity of
ADHD—the ‘disease’ and the ‘treatment’— Ritalin, they all deemed, not just
advisable, but mandatory. And that’s
all it took. Vincent, still entirely
normal, although labeled, was whisked off to psychiatric hospital where his
mother’s interference in his diagnosis and treatment could no longer be a
factor. And that’s where it stands. The court is now Vincent’s parent. The court
sees to it that, if nothing else, no one interferes with the Ritalin treatment
of his ADHD, despite the fact that the Ritalin circulating throughout his brain
and body was his first and only true disease/abnormality and despite the fact
that when last seen by his mother he had developed Ritalin-induced
tics—involuntary movements (never before present and, therefore, not idiopathic
Tourette’s syndrome). In
the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), April 28, 1999
[p.1490], I wrote: Once
children are labeled with ADHD, they are no longer treated as normal. Once methylphenidate hydrochloride or any
psychotropic drug courses through their brain and body, they are, for the first
time, physically, neurologically, and biologically abnormal. It
is the clear and present duty of the MBC to make clear to the judge in the
Booth case (Leonard P. Edwards, of Los Gatos), and all such cases, the exact
scientific status of ADHD—specifically that it is not a bona fide, disease,
much less one that calls for emergency, court-ordered treatment and the
termination of parental custody said to be necessary to accomplish it. How
many Diane Booths are there--how many Tammy Kubiaks (of Buffalo, NY)? In February, 2001, Tammy stopped her 12
year old son’s three, stupefying, psychiatric drugs, was deemed ‘unfit’ and,
Nazi-like, was stripped of custody of all three of her children. Here too, as in the majority of such cases,
Tammy was a single parent. In
the Clinical Psychiatric News, of May, 2000, page 49, we read: Gaining access to mental health care for children is
so difficult that parents often end up giving up custody to ensure
care…Approximately 2.1-4.1 million children, aged 9-17 years have a serious
mental or emotional disorder. Last
year, 23% of parents of children with behavioral disorders were told that they needed to relinquish custody to obtain intensive
mental health services for their children; 20% actually gave up
custody. Such
‘custody relinquishments’ are likely indistinguishable from those of Diane
Booth and Tammy Kubiak. All, we can be
sure, are for the ‘treatment’ of one or more illusory, fraudulent, non-existent
psychiatric ‘diseases’/ ‘chemical imbalances,’ without which, psychiatry and
Big Pharma would have little to treat.
In
1948, the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) divided
“neuropsychiatry” into the two distinct specialties of “neurology” and “psychiatry.” By mutual understanding and agreement neurology was to deal with organic
diseases of the nervous system, and psychiatry
with emotional and behavioral problems in physically/medically normal
persons. Non-psychiatric physicians
know it is we, not psychiatrists, who rule out organic disease before referring
patients to psychiatrists. Only the
public is deceived. Psychiatry’s claims
of “diseases” and “chemical imbalances” have no basis in medical science and
are nothing more than a contrived, market-place deception—one authored and
orchestrated by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American
Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) the NIH, the NIMH, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Medical Association
(AMA). Nor is this list complete. The
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) ‘diagnostic guideline’ [PEDIATRICS.
2000;105:1158], referred to ADHD as the most common ‘neurobehavioral’ disorder
of childhood. I responded [PEDIATRICS. May, 2001:1239]: “Neurobehavioral,” implies an abnormality of the
brain; a disease. And yet, no
confirmatory, diagnostic, abnormality has been found…It is apparent that
virtually all professionals of the extended ADHD ‘industry’ convey to parents,
and to the public-at-large, that ADHD is a ‘disease’ and that children said to
have it are ‘diseased’-‘abnormal.’ This
is a perversion of the scientific record and a violation of the informed
consent rights of all patients and of the public-at-large. The wording of the AAP Guideline should be
changed, forthwith, to reflect the scientific and medical facts of the matter. Mitchell
Stein and James Perrin, co-chairmen of the AAP Guidelines Committee, who tried
to quash my letter-to-the-editor, neither responded to my letter, nor ceased
referring to ADHD as though it was something abnormal about the brain of
children thus labeled. On
April 15, 1998, I wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno: The single, biggest heath care fraud in US
history—the representation of attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to be an actual disease, and the
drugging of millions of entirely normal American children, as “treatment,” is
spreading like a plague—still. That
ADHD is wholly devoid of validity as a disease, a medical syndrome or, anything
biologic or organic, is the pivotal element of the fraud. Reno
never responded. On
November 17, 1998, I testified to the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
Consensus Conference on ADHD: Without an
iota of proof … the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
proclaims the … children “brain-diseased,” “abnormal.” Children and Adults with Attention Deficit
Disorders (CHADD), funded by Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis), … has spread the
“neuro-biological” lie. The US
Department of Education, absolving itself of controlling the children and
rendering them literate, coerces the labeling and drugging…ADHD is a total,
100% fraud.” On
September 29, 2000, testifying before the Congress’ Committee on Education and
the Workforce, hearing entitled “Behavioral Drugs in Schools: Questions and
Concerns,” I stated: It would be a
fraud for any physician to call ADHD or any psychiatric condition an actual
disease. David
Fassler, seated to my left representing the APA and the American Academy of
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), uttered not a word. Claims such as those I have
cited from Family Circle, and such as are posited daily by organized psychiatry
are in violation of California, SB-836, Figueroa, under which: …It is unlawful for any
person licensed in the healing arts to disseminate or cause to be disseminated
any form of public communication, as defined, containing a false, fraudulent,
misleading, or deceptive statement or claim, for the purpose of inducing the
rendering of professional services or furnishing of products in connection with
the licensed person's professional practice or business, as specified. It
is also, in violation of the California Uniform Controlled Substances Act,
which states [page 36, Article 2, 11190. Prescriber’s Record for Schedule II
Substance]: The prescriber’s record shall show the pathology and purpose for which the
prescription is issued, or the controlled substance administered, prescribed,
or dispensed. The
only actual disease/abnormality/pathology for which Schedule II Controlled
Substances are prescribed is narcolepsy. It accounts for approximately 1/10th
of one percent of all such prescriptions while contrived, invented, fraudulent,
ADHD accounts for 99.9 percent.
Further--we see to it that our children—American children—consume 90-95
percent of the world’s supply of such addictive, dangerous, drugs. I
would urge that the MBC ask Surgeon General, David Satcher, and Richard K.
Harding, President of the American Psychiatric Association to cite, the proof
that even a single psychiatric condition/entity is a bona fide disease having
(as it must) a confirming/validating, objective physical/chemical abnormality
within the brain or body of the person.
More to the point--in that the claim that these are brain diseases,
neurological diseases, due to chemical imbalances of the brain, I would urge
that you take testimony from adult and child neurologists, neurochemists, and
neuropathologists—asking them--one psychiatric diagnosis at a time—whether any
of them is a bona fide disease having a confirming/validating, physical/chemical
abnormality. Senate Bill—119 and
the California Psychiatric Association
California,
Senate Bill-119 (Haynes and Oller), introduced January 24, 2001, has as its
objective to assure the appropriate school-based, diagnosis and ‘treatment’ of
ADHD. In a letter of February 13, 2001,
the California Psychiatric Association submitted it’s objections, [page 1, para 1]: …we have concluded that SB 119 is flawed in its
entirety because it operates on the
incorrect assumption that mental illnesses are not physical illnesses of the
complex organ, the brain, i.e., that these are “not real illnesses.” Here,
again, with no proof, and no science, the California Psychiatric Association
fraudulently, deceptively, claimed that psychiatrists diagnose and treat actual
diseases of the brain, when they know, perfectly well, that no such thing is
true. PATS—The Preschool
ADHD Treatment Study
In
my presentation to the MBC on November 3, 2001, I urged “special scrutiny” of the Preschool ADHD
Treatment Study (PATS), just launched at UCLA and UC Irvine, in which 3-5 year
olds are to be ‘treated’ with Schedule II, psychostimulants. In the January 26, 2001, journal Science [volume
291: 595], I made clear the scientific status of ADHD: …there
is no disease. No proof exists that
ADHD is a disease with a validating abnormality. Yet the public is told it is a ‘disease, that it is
‘neurobiologic,’ or ‘neurobehavioral.’ Undeterred,
an April 17, 2001, UCLA memo, used to recruit 3-5 year old subjects, utilized
the brain disease ‘lie’: The
brains of individuals with ADHD typically lack the chemical activity needed to
focus on activities or control actions. No such ‘lack,’ or any other abnormality, has ever
been proven. On
May 29, 2001, I wrote to the District Attorneys of Los Angeles and Orange
Counties, pointing out that ADHD has never been validated as a
disease/abnormality/pathology in conformity with requirements of the California
Uniform Controlled Substances Act and urging that the PATS research at both of
these California Universities, was illegal and should be shut down. I have had
no responses. Conclusion
On November 23, 2001, I addressed the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council on Europe on “Diagnosis and Treatment of ADHD and
Related Disorders and Their Treatment with Stimulants,” and concluded: Ladies
and gentlemen of Europe, you have it within your power to end the ADHD
epidemic. Never forget, there is no abnormality; there is no disease—the
children are normal. Do this, most of
all, for your children. And, do it for
your families, who could never imagine such a deception at the hands of the
medical profession. In
California and the whole of the US, the lay-public has been wholly deceived and
led to believe that psychiatric diagnoses/conditions are ‘brain diseases’ due
to ‘chemical imbalances,’ needing ‘chemical balancers’—pills. And this is exactly as planned by
psychiatry, bought-and-paid-for by Big Pharma--the world-wide pharmaceutical
industry. Nor are non-physicians,
including attorneys, judges and legislators, readily disabused of this
notion—the lynch-pin of the fraud.
While the ‘disease,’ ‘chemical imbalance’ propaganda, born of
psychiatry’s sham biological
research, has proven terribly seductive, physicians understand perfectly the
difference between subjective and objective, symptoms (subjective), and signs
(objective), psychiatry (subjective), and neurology (objective), and have a clear and present duty to put and
end to this deception and victimization in the name of ‘mental health.’ The
Medical Board of’California has a clear and present duty to expose this
deception and victimization in the name of ‘mental health,’ and to make
clear to all Californians and all of
their elected and appointed government officials, that no psychiatric,
emotional or behavioral diagnosis/condition is known to be a disease in the
usual medical/surgical sense of the
word. Further, the Medical Board of
California (MBC) has a clear and present duty to make clear to those in
psychiatry, as well as all who practice ‘mental health’ that they must cease all representations that they
diagnose and treat medical, biological, neurological, organic abnormalities,
disease, i.e., that they treat anything other than emotional and behavioral
conditions/diagnoses in physically/medically normal persons, in accord with the
1948, and still applicable, American
Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) definition. Sincerely, Fred
A. Baughman Jr., MD 1303
Hidden Mountain Dr. El
Cajon CA 92019 619
440 8236 drb@adhdfraud.com CC Governor CC Lt. Governor CC Attorney General CC All Members of the State Senate CC Senator Haynes CC Senator Oller CC Senator Figueroa CC All Members of the State Assembly CC Superintendent of Education CC All US Congresspersons from California CC All US Senators from California CC Director, NIH CC Director NIMH CC Secretary, DHHS CC US Attorney General CC Director, DEA CC Director, FDA |