tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:

The doublethink and hypocrisy of modern society is astounding.

When the mother (a single mother, as this is California) drops her son off with my friend (also single, of course), she includes several "Ritalin" capsules with instructions on how to dose her son with this depressant/behavior modification drug.

My friend ignores these Ritalins, which upsets the Mom greatly the next day when she realizes her son has not been given the tranks that are also known as "Mother's little helpers."

This, of course, is justified by the psychiatric profession's invention of dozens of bogus diseases, syndromes, and disorders for children. These are not caused by any organic pathology, of course, but are instead defined solely by the child belonging to the upper five percent of those exhibiting perfectly normal behaviors which annoy people who have money to hire psychiatrists. For kids, that's parents and teachers, and the afflicted population jumps to ten percent if you happen to be a kid unlucky enough to be under the care of Mormons. Refuse to go to a crappy public school and you are suffering from "School Phobia." Don't jump to follow the orders of the nearest adult, or disagree with an adult, and its "Oppositional-Defiant" Disorder. Not to mention the plethora of ADD/ADDH nonsense that is used to label any kid who is bored to tears by eight hours a day of political indoctrination from the NEA and AFT. Drugs for the poor, and therapy for the rich who can afford it, are of course the way the psychiatric profession offers to "cure" these invented maladies. And since every population of children will have an upper five percent (ten percent, for Mormons), a neverending supply of patients is assured.

This discipline sets him straight, but it's not something his New Age "supermom" would ever think of doing. Hence the kid throws temper tantrums, acts out, calls her "You fucking asshole" (remember, he's only 8 or so), and so on. So she cranks up his dose of Ritalin and he's zoned out for a while.

Actually, I think calling someone who force-feeds you a mind-numbing drug "A Fucking Asshole" is, to borrow one of Tim's favorite words, "Unremarkable." :) This Soviet-style "Medicalization of Dissent", while applied primarily to children today, historically has been done by the psychiatric profession on behalf of anyone who could write their name on a large check. It wasn't too long ago that they even had an official mental disorder whose symptoms were "an abnormal desire for freedom" on the part of a Black man. Slave owners must have been just as happy with that as Ritalin-dispensing parents and teachers are today.

The connection with the themes of our list is that this linguistic doublethink is what allows Big Brother's control of our communications and private files to be called by the relatively benign name of "escrow."

Indeed. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $

Perry Writes:

Most people would have no particular urge to stop a child with diabetes from taking her insulin. Your friend seems to have the sick idea that they know better than the child's parents whether the child should be taking their meds or not, simply because the medication is for a "mental" problem. This isn't your friend's child. Its someone else's child. They have no right to make such decisions.

Since diabetes has an organic cause, this analogy with syndromes and disorders defined solely by behavioral percentages fails. A better model might be height, which follows a basically continuous distribution once outliers due to functional endocrine problems are eliminated. We could, of course, define a "vertical deficit disorder" (VDD) which 10% of the population have by definition, and for which the treatment would be synthetic human growth hormone given regularly during the growing years. People with VDD would probably want to be taller, and be as successful as their peers at important things like basketball. The specified treatment would certainly demonstrate effectiveness in accomplishing this goal. People with VDD would argue that their disease was real, since it was hereditary, and could be measured with complex scientific instrumentation, like PET^H^H^HYardsticks. Nonetheless, reputable scientists usually only perscribe HGH for persons many standard deviations away from the norm, or who have medical disorders which interfere with normal production of the substance. Any doctor who started handing out perscriptions to everyone in the shortest 10% of the population would probably be up on malpractice charges posthaste. Amphetamines have demonstrated themselves to be a tricky medication even for psychological disorders for which they were once considered appropriate. ADD and its treatment plays very well into a society that seems to feel that each and every one of life's misfortunes must be given a name and called a disease. Of course, no amount of reason will disuade the True Believers from embracing yet another disease model, and we shouldn't expect that it would. But I think it is clear to many people that the forced medication of children for the convenience of those who take care of them is getting a bit out of control.

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

Why eliminate the people with endocrine problems? You need not invent a new syndrome. The folks with severe deficits of growth hormone are an actual group, and are a perfectly fine group to give growth hormones to.

The point was that the group with endocrine problems was an appropriate group to give growth hormone to, whereas the shortest 10% of the population was not. 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. 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."

However, that doesn't mean that growth hormone isn't needed for the people whom you choose to dismiss in your first paragraph as though they were not a valid place to draw the analogy.

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.

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 for their perfectly healthy short children off their doorsteps every day. Same goes for patients seeking antibiotics inappropriate for their illnesses, and countless other things. The price of giving the patient (or the patient's parents) everything they want is disease-resistant microorganisms, a country where everyone is over six feet tall, and classrooms full of obedient citizen-units in Soma-induced trances. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

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 believe he is claiming that children are being overmedicated for the purposes of controlling their behavior, and that the hard scientific justification for this practice is lacking.

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.

Again, I said that one should NEVER define a disease solely by percentages and subjective behavioral observations. Not that 10% was some sort of dividing point in doing so. Again, no one would try and define heart disease by the subjective observations of suddenly dropping dead, or of claiming chest pain. You would be lumping lots of diseases into one and learning nothing about their etiology. [snip]

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?

Sorry, Perry. It is perfectly normal for blood pressure to vary all over the range for which medication is given. Some people need medication, others are just hyper because they hate going to the doctor, or because the elevator was broken and they just ran up several flights of stairs. Some of these people have vascular damage. Others do not. Again, we don't simply measure blood pressure and give pills to the people who fall in the top X%. Pressure anomalies have many many causes, and doctors do complete workups and a differential diagnosis, based on the best models of disease processes they have available, before prescribing medication.

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.

Such people may need to find more interesting work. There is such a thing as being bored out of ones skull, you know.

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.

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.

Some people would make the same claim for small doses of opiates. Or small doses of benzodiazepines, or phenothiazines, or ethanol. Ritalin was developed because there were political problems with medicating people for performance-related problems with methamphetamines while trying to conduct a loud and noisy War on Drugs(TM).

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?

If someone has some sort of cognitive disability which can be diagnosed and for which treatment with medication is appropriate, I have no problem with that. But vague claims that "Johnny won't sit still" hardly constitute such a workup.

You miss the point. You spoke of involuntarily medicated kids. Most of the kids aren't involuntarily medicated.

Let's see. At the beginning of this message, you were questioning Tim's qualifications to suggest kids were overmedicated. Now you are telling us that the kids are qualified to give informed consent to the very same thing. Hardly consistant, even for you Perry.

Ritalin does not induce a zombie-like trance, as the numerous people on this mailing list who take it can tell you.

I think you need to cut your dose in half. :) Seriously, though, the really dumb thing in all of this is the constant pretending that drugs both do and don't have the ability to enhance performance. We vascilate between "Drugs are never the solution" and "Take this pill twice a day with a glass of water." This is a very mixed message indeed. One of the brightest guys I ever knew was a PhD Computer Scientist who was flying on cocaine 24 hours a day. His output was phenomenal, but I doubt he will be reading this message. He looked like a concentration camp inmate 10 years ago, and I doubt that he is alive today. TANSSAAFL, IMHO.

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

Of course, drugs can also be damaging. One tablet of Tylenol is not so bad. 100 destroy your liver. An occassional drink rarely hurts. Being falling down drunk at all times is unlikely to improve your life.

I will never take Tylenol. Acetaminophen is an interesting compound. It is a potent hepatotoxin, but is broken down "just in time" by liver enzymes when it is taken in small quantities. Hence it usually doesn't kill you. The Catch-22 here is that people whose livers are impaired for various reasons may not be able to metabolize it before it does its damage, and their livers may be destroyed. These people may not have any other symptoms which indicate to them that they have liver disease. There have been a number of cases of liver damage requiring transplantation, one which involved taking only a couple of tablets more than the recommended daily dose. Coincidentally, one of the morning shows had a piece today on a baby that required a liver transplant for a Tylenol overdose, just before I read your message. Seems the package of Tylenol said to consult a physician for the correct dosage if a child was under two years of age. The mom called the doctor and he gave her the dosage for "Children's Tylenol." The mother, unfortunately, was using "Infant Tylenol", which is slightly more concentrated, and the baby lost her liver as a result of this unfortunate miscomunication. Despite the marketing hype, the risks of acetaminophen just aren't worth it for a medication whose only purpose is to serve as a mild analgesic. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $

On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

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?

This might be a little out of context, but: I'd be willing to bet that about 75% of the people on this planet would be happy being meidicated, and at least 50% get that way on a regular basis. The real question is, is it a good idea to teach kids that drugs are the best answer to a problem? Again and again I will state that I do believe that ADD is a problem, but I'd bet that at least half the time you are medicating the kids because the parents have the problem. Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@crash.suba.com

In the message after his "Last Message on the Topic", "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com> writes:

...

Since diabetes has an organic cause, this analogy with syndromes and disorders defined solely by behavioral percentages fails.

Incorrect. I am not certain if ADD has been definitely linked to a lack of a certain neurotransmitter, but since it shows up on a PET scan, it probably is.

Even thinking about math shows up on a PET scan. Nothing disordered about that. I do it all the time. You seem to feel that if something can be detected scientifically, then it has some tangible existance beyond behavior and percentiles. Silly, because these things are tools of measurement too. Being able to reliably tell people apart based on some fallacious criteria does nothing to make the criteria less fallacious.

You say that a disorder defined only by behavioral percentage in not a real disorder. If the number was far less than 10%, would you then consider it a disease.

No. I would look at the population distribution. If it was smooth and continuous and similar to other distributions associated with continuous normal variation of physical characteristics, I certainly wouldn't call it a disease. If some poor soul was sitting five standard deviations away from the norm, with a verifiable organic problem, then the hypothesis of disease would certainly be one worthy of investigation.

In an earlier message, you claimed that depression is an actual disease. One-third of all Americans have some form of clinical depression. Your logic escapes me.

Depression is a normal human emotion as long as it is related to something sad in ones environment. Depression becomes a disease only when serious and inappropriate self-destructive behavior is likely, or when the mental state becomes endogenous, and unrelated to ones circumstances. Again, if I tried to define depression as "The least happy 33% of the population", that would be silly, regardless of whether true clinical depression existed.

It seems that the only people who think that drug treatment is bad for people with disorders that can cause that person to not reach his or her potential are those who have never even been afflicted with a mental disorder. Nor do they know much about the subject.

Medicating a disease is fine. Recreational uses of relatively harmless intoxicants and are also fine. It is the inappropriate use of strong medicines with serious side effects by clueless people for vague criteria like "reaching his or her potential" that I have a problem with.

People have lost jobs because of ADD.

People have lost jobs because they weren't physically strong, smelled bad, didn't have hair, or spoke English with an accent no one could understand. Do these people get "deficit disorders" too? Do we allow them to ingest potentially life-threatening and toxic chemicals in a vain attempt to pass everyone else in the Big Race Of Life(TM)? Face it. People are not all alike. Shit happens. Learn to adjust. Someday you'll find something you are good at, even if it's not public school.

I guess I am a True Believer. I believe that ADD exists.

I believe that large feet exist. But I don't walk around with an axe trying to correct the problem and save the large-footed people the shame that comes from not being able to excel in the world of ballet dancing.

I also believe in the theory of Relativity.

But can you derive it from a Lagrangian density without having to peek in the book? :)

Both of these are backed by hard evidence and nearly unanimous agreement among specialists in these fields.

There is absolutely no similarity between a hard science, like physics, and a collection of people who make money selling flim-flam to their disciples.

Of course, it's rather easy to dismiss something as a misfortune which doesn't effect you personally.

So the short, smelly, bald, big-footed people who can't do tensor calculus tell me. :) -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $

Regarding the 'paradoxical' effect of speed on children: It seems that age might not be the deciding factor. Scanning abstracts of Medline articles on the subjects of methylfenidate AND <variants of ADHD>, 469 hits in English, I found the one below. Perhaps the Swedish speed epidemia in the 60-70's, now having sort of a comeback, was/is partly self-medication. Note that this is about ADULTS and that the research was made in 'The Peoples Republic of Massachusetts' (as someone just called it). That these guys calm down on a drug that makes most people the other way around suggests a structural difference; that some of us are suffering from 'Ritalin deficiency'. *********************************************************************** Spencer T. Wilens T. Biederman J. Faraone SV. Ablon JS. Lapey K. Pediatric Psychopharmacology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA. A double-blind, crossover comparison of methylphenidate and placebo in adults with childhood-onset attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry. 52(6):434-43, 1995 Jun. Abstract BACKGROUND: There are few controlled studies of methylphenidate hydrochloride in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and their results have been equivocal. The discrepancies among these studies may be related to low doses, diagnostic uncertainties, and lack of attention to comorbid disorders. METHODS: We conducted a randomized, 7-week, placebo-controlled, crossover study of methylphenidate in 23 adult patients with DSM-III-R ADHD using standardized instruments for diagnosis, separate assessments of ADHD and depressive and anxiety symptoms, and a robust daily dose of methylphenidate hydrochloride, 1.0 mg/kg per day. RESULTS: We found a marked therapeutic response for methylphenidate treatment of ADHD symptoms that exceeded the placebo response (78% vs 4% P < .0001). Response to methylphenidate was independent of gender, psychiatric comorbidity with anxiety or moderate depression, or family history of psychiatric disorders. CONCLUSION: Robust doses of methylphenidate are effective in the treatment of adult ADHD. *********************************************************************** Asgaard

On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Derek Bell wrote:

ObCrypto:

I see some Australian researchers have made an advance in quantum crypto.

What kinds of advances? Last I heard, British Telecom was using quantum crypto on 10 kilometer fiber optic cables. -- Mark =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= markm@voicenet.com | finger -l for PGP key 0xe3bf2169 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." --George Orwell, _1984_

"Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com> writes:

While the psychiatric profession has invented many bogus diseases, that does not mean that the profession has no credibility. Remember that psychology is little more than philosophy. Abnormal behavior patterns don't necessarily mean that a child has a disorder or disease. However, if the child experiences physical symptoms, then a chemical imbalance in the brain is not that farfetched.

There are, of course, real mental illnesses with underlying pathology, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and clinical depression. I'm not sure the existence of genuine mental illness makes the psychiatric profession credible, however, when they are all too willing to climb in bed with the latest political fad. Recall those "experts" during World War I who explained with prefect seriousness to the American public that the reason the Germans' heads fit so well into those pointy helmets was that their brains were missing the part that distinguished right from wrong. Adolescent Psychiatric Imprisonment and Insurance Fraud are a multi-million dollar well-organized business in the United States, and talk shows are filled with women who split into 1,000 different personalities, some of them alien visitors, after being traumatized by some sexual oddity.

First of all, a child is considered to have "school phobia" when the child refuses to go to school and also has severe anxiety attacks, vomiting, and nausea.

Goodness gracious, you make these people sound almost reasonable. I remember last year one local TV station did a piece on "school phobia", and the wonderful drugs that could be used to treat it. The kid profiled simply didn't like school, and refused to attend it, and the list of symptoms given to help parents recognize the disorder were entirely attendance related. Of course, with enough Mellaril in your system, you can probably put up with just about anything.

Attention Deficit Disorder is hardly nonsense; it's a disorder found to be partly hereditary and strongly linked with clinical depression.

ADD people are simply the upper 5-10% of the population with regard to behavioral traits which make learning more difficult. Of course such things can be hereditary and of course people who can't live up to expectations placed upon them sometimes get clinically depressed. The thing to remember here is that we are looking at things which show continuous normal variation in any population, like height and hatsize, and the people who are being labeled and treated here are hardly some huge number of standard deviations away from the norm.

There are real illnesses, and there are fake ones. Just because the psychiatic profession does attribute certain behavior to some non-existent illness doesn't mean there is any reason to not believe in any psychological maladies.

Which of course is not the issue here. No one has stated that legitimate mental illness does not exist, merely that the profession has a tendency to use creative imagination where a market or political pressure exists.

It's surprising to me that people consider the Unabomber "insane" but yet do not believe that many very real mental illnesses and disorders exist.

Insanity is a legal term which by its very construction, is an almost impossible set of criteria to meet. It has nothing to do with any scientific definition of mental illness. You can be completely bonkers and carrying on meaningful conversations with wall ornaments, and the government will be more than happy to fry you in the electric chair. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $

ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:

What annoys me to NO END is the laws that require that children under age of 13 (?) must always be under parental supervision. These laws even say that leaving children unsupervised is child abuse.

Igor, it was safe to leave childred alone in Russia because in Russia perverts and child molesters were jailed and/or castrated. Here in the U.S. perverts have 'civil rights'. Hence the children must be protected from them. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, On Sun, 7 Jul 1996, Simon Spero wrote:

On Sat, 6 Jul 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

...

...she includes several "Ritalin" capsules with instructions on how to dose her son with this depressant/behavior modification drug.

Er... Tim... Ritalin is an amphetamine.

Yes, normally, but doesn't it have a paradoxical reaction for hyperactive children (i.e., it acts as a depressant for them)? S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sandy Sandfort writes:

On Sun, 7 Jul 1996, Simon Spero wrote:

...

On Sat, 6 Jul 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

...

...she includes several "Ritalin" capsules with instructions on how to dose her son with this depressant/behavior modification drug.

Er... Tim... Ritalin is an amphetamine.

Yes, normally, but doesn't it have a paradoxical reaction for hyperactive children (i.e., it acts as a depressant for them)?

1) If you believe that Ritalin has a different effect on hyperactive children, that would seem to indicate that the May hypothesis that hyperactivity isn't a biological phenomenon is false. 2) Yes, it appears that Ritalin has s different effect on children with ADD, in that it reduces their symptoms. "depressant", though, isn't the right term. 3) Of course, this isn't a crypto mailing list any more, so why NOT discuss every topic under the sun. .pm

At 10:25 AM -0400 7/7/96, Sandy Sandfort wrote:

...

Er... Tim... Ritalin is an amphetamine.

Yes, normally, but doesn't it have a paradoxical reaction for hyperactive children (i.e., it acts as a depressant for them)?

Yes. And for some of *them*, it makes them monomaniacal SOBs. ;-). I get more work done with Ritalin, but I'm *much* nicer without it. I've decided to live with ADD rather than treat it, which is what most people (including "Dr. ADD", Richard(?) Hallowell) do. Jolt cola is also popular. :-). Like a lot of pop-psychopharmacology, "syndromes" frequently get defined by whether the right drug has the desired effect. If prozac works, you're depressed, if Ritalin does, you're an ADDer, and so on. By Tim's anecdotal evidence, the little hellion (hey, *I* was one...) must be ADD because Ritalin works. You can actually see ADD with a PET scan, but the proper way to get a diagnosis of ADD is to get tested for it, which, in the case of ADD, is an expensive man-day or two with with some clinical shrink in your face, and a bunch of frustrating (if you're ADD) tests of your attention and ability to focus in the presence of a lot of distractions. Oddly enough, *another* pop-psychologist from Harvard was on "20/20" this week talking about "emotional" intellegence, and one of the determinants was inability to understand delayed gratification. Like most kids with ADD, I must have been a drooling idiot, in that case. However, I practically agree with Tim on all of his screed. (A good one, I might add. He probably only reread it once for punctuation and spelling before he did a command-e to send it on its way. After wiping the foam from his mouth, that is. ;-)) It seems to me that the very *last* person to be allowed to diagnose ADD is some crypto-socialist, fucking-statist, control-freak, industrial-mode, human-warehouse-zookeeping "educator". The humorous irony of all this is, of course, that my wife is a senior education bureaucrat for the People's Republic of Massachusetts. An "equal time" marriage indeed. And *she* pays the health insurance, because I couldn't keep a *steady* job if my life depended on it. (A compensatory mechanism?) Well, maybe if my *life* depended on it. That *might* get my attention. BarelyObCrypto: ADD is more about lack of attention *control* than lack of attention itself. Hyperfocus is also a trait of ADHD, and computers tend to cause hyperfocus for a lot of ADDers. How many easily distracted knee-jiggling wunderkind hackers do *you* know? Care to guess how many ADDers there are on cypherpunks? Wiping foam from *my* mouth, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/