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The Myth of ADHD

The ADHD Claims

The ADHD Fraud

ADHD True Causes

Pseudo ADHD Database

ADHD & Ritalin

Fred A. Baughman Jr. MD
Neurology Child Neurology (board certified)
Fellow, American Academy of Neurology
1303 Hidden Mountain Drive
El Cajon, CA 92019
619 440 8236 (phone)
619 442 1932 (fax)
fredbaughmanmd@cox.net

Letters Editor, JAMA November 5, 2002
515 N. State Street
Chicago, IL 60610
also to: JAMA-letters@ama-assn.org
also to: fax 312 464 5824

Re:

Developmental Trajectories of Brain Volume Abnormalities in Children and Adolescents With Attention- Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
F. Xavier Castellanos, MD ; Patti P. Lee, MD; Wendy Sharp, MSW; Neal O. Jeffries, PhD; Deanna K. Greenstein, PhD; Liv S. Clasen, PhD; Jonathan D. Blumenthal, MA; Regina S. James, MD; Christen L. Ebens, BA; James M. Walter, MA; Alex Zijdenbos, PhD; Alan C. Evans, PhD; Jay N. Giedd, MD; Judith L. Rapoport, MD JAMA. 2002;288:1740-1748

To the Editor:

CHADD, funded by Ciba/Novartis, maker of Ritalin, calls ADHD a brain disease. NIMH researchers, Castellanos included, dominate CHADD’s “national professional advisory board” and sanction the “disease” pronouncement.

Nasrallah [1] scanned (CT) adult males treated for childhood hyperactivity and concluded: “cortical atrophy may be a long-term adverse effect of this treatment.”

Despite the fact that all subject-groups were stimulant-treated, researchers—mainly from the NIMH--continued to represent the brain atrophy [2-16] as proof that ADHD was a disease, avoiding the study of drug-naïve groups.

In 1996, Castellanos [16] stated: “A replication study with stimulant-naïve boys with ADHD is under way.” Such a study never appeared.

At the 1998, Consensus Conference, Swanson (presenting) and Castellanos [17] summarized: “Recent investigations provide converging evidence that a refined phenotype of ADHD/HKD (hyperkinetic disorder) is characterized by reduced size in specific neuroanatomical regions…”

Baughman asked [18] : “Dr. Swanson, why didn’t you mention that virtually all of the ADHD subjects in the neuroimaging studies have been on chronic stimulant therapy and that this is the likely cause of their brain atrophy?”

Swanson: “…this is a critical issue…I am planning a study to investigate that.”

With the “epidemic” 4.4 million, the final statement of Consensus Conference Panel [19], read: “...we do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.”

From Readers Digest, January, 2000 [20]: “Castellanos and his group found three areas of the brain to be significantly smaller in ADHD kids…Some critics claim that such brain differences…might actually be caused by Ritalin…To address this, Castellanos has now embarked on another study, imaging the brains of ADHD youngsters who have not been treated with drugs.” .

Why then, did Castellanos co-mingle treated and un-treated ADHD subjects?

Why the Castellanos failure to reference Bartzokis [21] who found brain atrophy in amphetamine addicts, suggesting, that stimulants, not the never-validated disease, ADHD, causes the brain atrophy?

Subjects were said to have DSM-IV [22]-defined, ADHD. How could this be true when the study spanned 1991-2001 and the DSM-IV was not published until 1994?

On March 1, 2000, Castellanos [23] wrote me: “The anatomic MRI study you asked about …was begun approximately 4 years ago; it is approaching completion.” Nineteen-ninety-six, not 1991? When was it changed? Why?

Pam [24], wrote: “If each emotion is not physiologically distinctive, there can be no biological marker for each type or subtype of emotional pathology …the preponderance of research contributed by biological psychiatry up to the present is questionable or even invalidated by the criticisms just made.”

Here, is the essence of the fraud of “biological psychiatry”: no matter how troubled or troublesome the individual, there are no physical abnormalities/diseases-- And yet psychiatric research applies every bio-medical technology, as if there were; the stuff of their pseudo-scientific literature, referring to their every entity as a “disease.”

The irony is that they do find subtle, real, brain, abnormalities in almost all such patients! But these are not due to ADHD, ODD, PTSD, or any other DSM, invented disease--they are due to the few or several psychiatric drugs such persons are invariably put on the moment they become psychiatric “patients.”

Castellanos has not proved that ADHD is a real disease, or that the psycho-stimulants are not the cause of the brain atrophy. He will not prove a thing until he renounces the pseudo-science of “biological psychiatry.”
Not a single psychiatric “disease” has been validated as such. The physical complications of psychiatric conditions can only be due to their “treatments.”

Sincerely,

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Nasrallah H, et al [1986] Cortical atrophy in young adults with a history of hyperactivity in childhood. Psychiatric Research, 1986;17:241-246.

2. Hynd GW, Semrud-Clikeman M, Lorys AR, et al. Corpus callosum morphology in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: morphometric analysis of MRI. J Learn Disabil.1991;24:141-146.

3. Giedd JN, Castellanos FX, Casey BJ, et al.Quantitative morphology of the corpus callosum in Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.Am J Psychiatry.1994;151:665-669.

4. Semrud-Clikeman M, Filipek PA, Biederman J, et al. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: magnetic resonance imaging morphometric analysis of the corpus callosum. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry.1994;33:875-881.

5. Baumgardner TL, Singer HS, Denckla MB, et al. Corpus callosum morphology in children with Tourette syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Neurology. 1996;47:477-482.

6. Lyoo IK, Noam GG, Lee CK, et al. The corpus callosum and lateral ventricles in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a brain magnetic resonance imaging study. Biol Psychiatry.1996;40:1060-1063.

7. Hynd GW, Semrud-Clikeman M, Lorys AR, et al. Brain morphology in developmental dyslexia and attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity. Arch Neurol.1990;47:919-926.

8. Filipek PA, Semrud-Clikeman M, Steingard RJ, et al. Volumetric MRI analysis comparing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal controls.Neurology.1997;48:589-601.

9. Hynd GW, Hern KL, Novey ES, et al.Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and asymmetry of the caudate nucleus.J Child Neurol.1993;8:339-347.

10. Castellanos FX, Giedd JN, Eckburg P, et al.Quantitative morphology of the caudate nucleus in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.Am J Psychiatry.1994;151:1791-1796.

11. Aylward EH, Reiss AL, Reader MJ, et al.Basal ganglia volumes in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.J Child Neurol.1996;11:112-115.

12. Castellanos FX, Giedd JN, Berquin PC, et al.Quantitative brain magnetic resonance imaging in girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Arch Gen Psychiatry.2001;58:289-295.

13. Berquin PC, Giedd JN, Jacobsen LK, et al.The cerebellum in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a morphometric study.Neurology.
1998;50:1087-1093.

14. Mostofsky SH, Reiss AL, Lockhart P, Denckla MB.Evaluation of cerebellar size in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.J Child Neurol.1998;13:434-439.

15. Baumeister AA, Hawkins MF.Incoherence of neuroimaging studies of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Clin Neuropharmacol.2001;24:2-10.

16. Castellanos FX, Giedd JN, Marsh WL, et al.Quantitative brain magnetic resonance imaging in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry.1996;53:607-616.

17. Swanson J, Castellanos FX. Biological Basises of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Invited presentation at the NIH, Consensus Development Conference on ADHD, November 16-18, 1998.

18. Baughman FA (invited participant). Quote from videotape, NIH, Consensus Conference on ADHD, November 16, 1998.

19. Final Statement of the Panel of the NIH, Consensus Conference on ADHD, November 18, 1998.

20. John Pekkanen. Making Sense of Ritalin (interview with FX Castellanos). Readers Digest, January, 2000:159-168.

21. Bartzokis G, Beckson M, Lu PH, Edwards N, Rapoport R, Wiseman E, Bridge P. Age-related brain volume reductions in amphetamine and cocaine addicts and normal controls: implications for addiction research. Psychiatry Res. 2000.10;98(2):93-102.

22. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition. Washington, DC. 1994.

23. Castellanos, FX. Personal correspondence to Fred A Baughman, Jr., March 1, 2000.

24. Pam A. A critique of the scientific status of biological psychiatry. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 1990;82 (Supplement 362):1-35.


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