Mike Duvos writes:
Similarly while there might very well be some disorder of cognition for which amphetamines would be appropriate medication, prescribing them on the basis of which 10% of the population performs least well in the traditional "cells and bells" school environment is not it.
Fine, lets say that you are right, and that some number of children could use Ritalin. Is it your opinion that Tim May is qualified to diagnose children who do and don't need it? He appears to be claiming that he can. I will note, of course, that your contention about percentages and the likelyhood that something is a disease doesn't really wash very well. By your lights, then, heart disease couldn't be a "real" illness given that a lot more than 10% of the population suffers from it to one extent or another. Of course, we could simply redefine dying of a heart attack as "normal" and then we could be done. Sure, its possible that ADD is grotesquely overdiagnosed. Maybe its possible that 10% of the population has it and that most of them barely make it through life. Maybe its something in between. How do you know? Have you done any studies? Have you even read the scientific literature?
The fact that some claim to be able to demonstrate ADD by "repeatable biological tests" carries no more weight than the ability to repeatably demonstrate that a person is short of stature by "repeatable tape measure tests."
There is a difference between giving medication for a verifiable organic problem, like insulin for diabetes, or growth hormone for a pituitary defect, and giving it to the 10% shortest, or the 10% most likely to call their teachers bleep words.
How about giving people with hypertension blood pressure medication? I mean, they are just "out of the norm", right? I mean, there is a continuum of blood presures, yes? Why should we give the people at the top of the spectrum medications, just because high blood pressures are associated with vascular accidents? I suppose you don't understand what it might be like for someone to be unable to do their work no matter how heavy the threat against them if they don't, and no matter how easy it is. There are people out there who can't get themselves to pay a phone bill or throw out the newspapers for months on end -- they just can't get themselves to dance around into the task no matter how hard they try, no matter how great the threat (job loss, etc) to them is. Perhaps you would call such a person "crazy". After all, you reason, YOU never had any trouble doing any of those things. Maybe they are just complete fakers -- they just need a kick in the ass, right. Well, fine. Many such people, given a small dose of Ritalin, miraculously recover from their "crazyness", or their "faking" or whatever it is. They start paying their bills, writing the overdue reports at the office, listening in school, etc. They cease to play incessantly with fidget toys and they get on with their lives. Maybe you would prefer to "help" them by not letting them get medication. Maybe its "unnatural". Could you explain to me, however, how you are making their lives better by not giving them their meds? I mean, what concretely is better about their lives?
Has it occurred to you that many of the children in question are happy being medicated, as are many adults? In any case, who are you to tell other people what's good for them?
Again, to return to the height analogy, doctors have to throw short parents seeking human growth hormone[...]
You miss the point. You spoke of involuntarily medicated kids. Most of the kids aren't involuntarily medicated.
The price of giving the patient (or the patient's parents) everything they want is [...] classrooms full of obedient citizen-units in Soma-induced trances.
Ritalin does not induce a zombie-like trance, as the numerous people on this mailing list who take it can tell you. Perry