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FRED A. BAUGHMAN JR., M.D.
NEUROLOGY & CHILD NEUROLOGY (Board Certified)
1303 Hidden Mountain Drive
El Cajon , CA 92019
Sandra F. Olson, MD, President June 5, 2003
55116
Dear Dr. Olson,
As a Fellow of the American Academy Neurology I am shocked to find it’s leadership (and that of the Child Neurology Society—CNS, with over-lapping membership) colluding with organized psychiatry (American Psychiatric Association—APA, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry--AACAP), pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics--AAP), and family practice (American Academy of Family Practice--AAFP), toward the marketplace end of representing to the public-at-large, and to patients, that psychiatric conditions/diagnoses are brain/neurological, disorders/diseases/chemical imbalances, when none of them are, to make “patients” of normal individuals and to elicit and justify their treatment with drugs/ “chemical balancers.”
Diagnosis is the first, most important, duty of every physician. As all neurologists know, the first part of diagnosis (1) is to determine whether or not a physical abnormality/disease is present. In persons in whom an abnormality/disease is found, the physician’s next duty (2) is to determine which abnormality/disease—what physicians know as differential diagnosis. Neurology is the challenging science and art of diagnosis of abnormalities/diseases of the brain/nervous system.
Lay persons/patients are easily confused and deceived when it comes to the language of medicine, and have no alternative but to trust us—their physicians. And what I am speaking about here is a systematic, organized effort to deceive them regarding the fundamental issue of whether or not they are diseased/abnormal or disease-free/normal.
I have no doubt that you, and all in leadership in the AAN (and CNS), are fully aware that neurology was established as a specialty, apart from psychiatry, in 1948, neurology to deal with physical/organic abnormalities of the brain/nervous system--diseases; psychiatry with emotional and behavioral problems in medically/neurologically normal individuals; in persons in whom physical/organic/neurological abnormalities had been excluded/ruled out. All of us in neurology (both adult and child neurology) understand this and understand that our legitimate responsibility to psychiatric patients and to our psychiatrist colleagues is that of excluding the presence of organic disease--real disease. Knowing all of this, it is a betrayal for any physician--neurologists, most of all, to represent to patients, and to the public, that wholly subjective, psychiatric, constructs/conditions, are actual diseases of the brain—neurological diseases--the purpose being to make “patients” of normals. Nor can it be denied that this is what is going on, in the US
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CONGRESS—1970
In a Congressional hearing entitled “Federal Involvement in the Use of Behavior Modification Drugs on Grammar School Children,” September 29, 1970, John E. Peters, M.D., Ph.D. [2], Child Study Center, University of Arkansas Medical Center of the National Project of Minimal Brain Dysfunction in Children (Peters is a child psychiatrist, professor, department of psychiatry, head of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry, of University of Arkansas) testified:
“It is not known exactly the underlying organic condition, or psychological condition, behind MBD. We feel it has to do with some dysfunction of the brain, and we have to go mainly by analogy between children who have known brain damage and the behavior in children who do not have known brain damage, but do have identical behavior. So by deduction, we assume that there has to be some dysfunction of the brain.”
Dr. Ronald Lipman , Chief, Clinical Studies Section, FDA, testified:
“…Hyperkinesis is something that brings the child into conflict with his parents, peers, and teachers, and that the teacher observes behavior and has a referral role to play. But, as you know, Hyperkinesis is a medical syndrome. It should be properly diagnosed by a medical doctor.”
On October 12, 1970 , Congressman, Cornelius Gallagher wrote to HEW Secretary, Elliott Richardson:
“I have received letters highly critical of the focus of the medical side of minimal brain dysfunction (the reigning designation at the time), which is, incidentally, one of at least thirty-eight names attached to this condition…Such a high incidence in the population--as high as thirty percent in ghetto areas…may not be pathological at all…”
In a Congressional hearing, July 15, 1996 , Rep. Christopher Shays observed:
“In ADHD, we are trying to draw the line between personality and pathology, and we are placing millions of children and adults on either side of the social, medical and legal boundary that divides the healthy from the sick. We should do so only with the greatest care, and with particular reticence to make our children medical patients...”
We in neurology understand that the presence or absence of neurological/brain disease is our responsibility more than any other kind of physician or specialist. We also understand that psychiatrists do not do physical or neurological examinations, and do not, as part of their specialty’s mandate, diagnose organic diseases of the brain/nervous system or any system of the body.
At the National Institute of Health’s (NIH), Consensus Conference on ADHD, November 16-18, 1998, William B. Carey, of the University of Pennsylvania reported on “Is ADHD a Valid Disorder?” and concluded:
“What is…described as ADHD in the United States
Speaking volumes of the collusion of medical academia, Carey stated:
“ADHD behaviors are assumed to be largely or entirely due to abnormal brain function.” The DSM-IV does not say so, but textbooks and journals do.”
Commenting on the Report of the Panel, author, psychologist, Richard Degrandpre, Ph.D. observed:
“… it appears that you define disease as a maladaptive cluster of characteristics. In the history of science and medicine, this would not be a valid definition of disease.”
Having failed to prove that ADHD is a disease, the organizers of the Conference, primarily CHADD and the NIMH, sought to re-define the word ‘disease’.
Other neurologists participated in the Conference, but I was the only one to uphold neurological science and ethical medical practice, and confront the false claim being made, namely, that ADHD was a real disease, something “neurologic”/ “neurobiologic.” I testified:
“Without an iota of proof … the NIMH proclaims the … children “brain-diseased,” “abnormal.” CHADD, funded by Ciba-Geigy, … 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.”
Swanson and Castellanos reviewed the sMRI (structural--magnetic resonance imaging) literature, 1986 through 1998, reported that ADHD subjects had “on-average 10 percent brain atrophy” and concluded that this proved that ADHD was a neurological/brain disorder/disease. They made no mention of the fact that all of the ADHD subject-cohorts had been treated with long-term Ritalin/amphetamine therapy. It remained for Baughman [10], following their presentation, to point out their incredible omission, and to suggest that their Ritalin/amphetamine “treatment,” not ADHD, was the only plausible cause of the brain atrophy.
In that the Conference organizers— primarily CHADD and the NIMH--could not proceed with their claim that ADHD was a brain disease, the final statement of the Consensus Conference Panel published and distributed, November 18, 1998, could only confess:
“ ...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.”
By 1998, without an abnormality to make it a disease, the ADHD epidemic had reached 4 million!
With the confession that there was no such disease, the ADHD epidemic should have ended right there, but it did not. Continuing to portray the brain atrophy/shrinkage/shriveling found sMRI research as validation of ADHD, when all it has proved is that Ritalin/amphetamine “treatment” causes brain atrophy, the ADHD epidemic, today, stands at 6 million (US, school-aged children ).
AN EPIDEMIC OF PSYCHIATRIC DRUGGING, NOT PSYCHIATRIC “DISEASES”
In 1970, at the start of psychiatry’s calling school and behavioral problems “diseases,” 150,000 to 200,000 children were on psychiatric medications. Today, 17 %; 8-9 million are.
Not an epidemic of “neurobiological” diseases, what we have instead is an epidemic of for-profit drugging of infants, children and adults of all ages who were normal at diagnosis but who’s first and only abnormality/disease has been the drug/drugs almost all are administered. This is not the legitimate practice of medicine but a monumental fraud and national disgrace.
BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY—OXYMORON; PSEUDOSCIENCE
In 1986, Colin Ross, himself a psychiatrist, chided:
…dealing with symptoms or syndromes as if they were specific disease reflects a trend in psychiatry to regard mental illnesses as biological entities…But in this surrealistic world of pseudo-entities, the psychiatrist abdicated reality to embrace biological reductionism.
In 1990, Alvin Pam, a scientific psychologist, sought to impose scientific standards upon psychiatry, writing:
…any studies that do not meet standards for proper research procedures or interpretation of data must not be accepted for publication or, if already published must be discredited within the professional literature…the possibility that that emotional experience (love, hate, fear, grief) may be physiologically non-specific gets short shrift…If each emotion is not physiologically distinctive, there can be no biological marker for each type or subtype of emotional pathology, and thus most current research would be methodologically inappropriate…the preponderance of research contributed by biological psychiatry up to the present is questionable or even invalidated by the criticisms just made.
In “biological” psychiatry there is a parallel neurology, a parallel neuroradiology, a parallel genetics, a parallel neurochemistry and a parallel epidemiology, all of them pseudosciences, providing their own pseudoscientific peer review, their own pseudoscientific literature and, in the end, their own illusory, pseudoscientific, diseases.
I say “parallel” neurology, “parallel” neuroradiology, etc. because the “researchers” of “biological” psychiatry, never subject their research to the true scientific scrutiny of neurological researchers, neuroradiologicalresearchers, genetics researchers, etc, which would begin, of course, with the validation or invalidation of their professed “diseases.”
And, if their illusory “disorders”/”diseases” were invalidated, there could be no more research and no more drug trials and no more illusions of diseases, and no more “chemical imbalances,” and no more need for “chemical balancers”—pills, and no more ADHD and no more $500,000,000 Ritalin market annually.
Nor do legitimate neurologists and other scientists from within medical academia speak forthrightly of biological psychiatry—the anti-Hippocratic, pseudoscience--in their midst. That they don’t has everything to do with their common, massive, funding from Big Pharma—the number one beneficiary of every invented disease “epidemic.”
AAN GIVES AID & COMFORT TO BIOLOGIC PSYCHIATRIC PSEUDOSCIENCE
I have enclosed a copy of my May 22, 2003 letter to Daniel R Weinberger, Chief of the Clinical Brain Disorders (by which they mean “diseases) Branch, of the NIMH. From Neurology Today, June, 2002, p 26-28 we read:
Dr. Weinberger explained that neuroimaging in the form of MRI, fMRI, and PET has demonstrated that most major psychiatric diseases—depressive disorders and schizophrenia, for example—are associated with “subtle but objectively characterizable changes” in brain structure and function. “These changes do not establish the diagnosis but do demonstrate the involvement of the brain in these disorders,” he said.
What he said, in essence, was that the psychiatric conditions/disorders to which you referred were diseases/abnormalities of the brain—neurological diseases. Nowhere in the article by McBride were there citations to proofs in the peer-reviewed literature regarding any specific psychiatric conditions or diagnoses. For that reason I wrote to the editor of Neurology Today, Dr. Lewis P. Rowland:
Dr. Weinberger must submit for publication in Neurology Today, references to the proof that “neuroimaging in the form of MRI, fMRI, and PET has demonstrated that most major psychiatric disease—depressive disorders and schizophrenia, for example—are associated with “subtle but objectively characterizable changes” in brain structure and function.” If he is unable to present proof of the “subtle but objectivelycharacterizable changes” in these psychiatric conditions, the editors of Neurology Today should say so and print a retraction.
To date, the editors of Neurology Today, a publication of the American Academy
I find it troubling that the AAN is a party to the movement to re-combine the separate, distinct, specialties of psychiatry and neurology by publishing regular articles urging their merger, within the pages of Neurology Today. I have given my appraisal of the current scientific and ethical status of the specialty of psychiatry. For that reason, and because not a single psychiatric condition/illness/disorder/disease/”chemical imbalance” has been/can be proved to be a brain disease, there is no shared neurological science/basis, and no justification for a marriage of the two specialties.
My suspicion is that the only purpose served by neurology joining with psychiatry is to give credence to the utterly false representations of the later, and of all who practice the pseudo-science of psychiatric conditions as brain disorders/diseases/ “chemical imbalances.” This would be a fundamental, degrading alteration for the AAN and for all adult and pediatric neurology. I urge you and the leadership of the AAN to resist all such entreaties, no matter how alluring the “unrestricted financial support” invariably provided by one and all manufacturers of “chemical balancers,” that is, Big Pharma
Sincerely yours,
/s/
Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD
CC
Lewis P. Rowland, Editor,
Montel Williams
Sean Hannity
Neal Boortz
Vera Sharav
Doug Montero
Gary Null
Rep. Max Burns
Rep. Pete Hoekstra
Rep. Bob Schaffer
Federal Trade Commission
Attorney General John Ashcroft
Daniel Weinberger, MD, NIMH
President, AAP
President, APA
President AACAP
President, AAFP
President, CNS
President, AMA
Enclosures:
1. Letter to AAN President Kittredge, 2/18/00
2. Letter to CNS President Painter, 2/16/00
3. Letter to AAP President Berman, 10/15/01
4. Letter to CHADD CEO Ross
5. Letter to Medical Board of California regarding APA
6. Letter to Pfizer, Inc. regarding AACAP
7. Letter to Attorney General Janet Reno
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