On March 21, 2000, fourteen-year old Matthew Smith was having a good time skateboarding with two of his cousins. Suddenly, he collapsed to the floor and started turning blue. His cousins called 911 but the paramedics couldn’t revive him.. At the hospital he was pronounced dead from a heart attack – a heart attack caused by Ritalin.
Matthews parents had been giving him Ritalin since he was six years old. Ritalin is classified as a Schedule II drug, which the DEA reserves for the most dangerous and addictive drugs that can be prescribed legally.
But to the educators at Matthews school, Ritalin was simply a magic pill that made troublesome students easier to manage.
Prior to being diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (or ADHD or ADD for short), Matthew was an energetic, boisterous highly social child who did not focus on his school work quite the way his teachers wanted him to.
Was he in dire need of medication?
The push to label Matthew occurred when he was in the first grade. School officials said that he was fidgety in his seat and would sometimes disrupt the class, and that he often had trouble staying focused on his work.
The school social worker called Matthews parents and said that Matthew needed to take medication saying, “He’s got ants in his pants”
This unqualified social worker made the diagnosis and recommendation for medication and handed them a list of physicians who would provide them with a prescription.
Even though technically this constitutes practicing medicine without a license, this same process has been occurring in school districts all across the nation by thousands of teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists and social workers for years now.
According to Dr. Fred Baughman, there is an epidemic taking place all across America. This is happening everywhere.
Parents are told to place their children on Ritalin or Adderall (generic name is "Amphetamine") or else the student will be placed in special education programs or refused attendance at school.
“Parents are succumbing to the threats from school officials without any idea of the possible side effects or negative consequences.”
In San Diego at just one school, 65 percent of the fifth graders had been diagnosed with ADD and were on medication.
There are over 6 million children in the United State who have been diagnosed with ADHD and drugged for ADHD.
“We are drugging normal children so that they act less like normal children and forcing them to act like the docile adults who are supposed to be teaching them”.
Dr. Baughman is one of numerous medical professionals who recently testified in front of the FDA and Congress.
“ADHD is not a disorder or disease or a syndrome or chemical imbalance of the brain. It is not over-diagnosed, under-diagnosed, or mis-diagnosed. It doesn’t exist in 3%, or 5%, or 10 % of the population. In fact, it doesn’t exist at all. It’s is 100% Fraud.”
Dr. Baughman and many others believe that there is no medical basis for the diagnosis.
“It is a manufactured disease-an invented disease that results in huge profits for psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies.”
We have allowed school and health care professionals to blanket classify behavior and establish bounds for student conduct in the school environment. We hand out drugs to kids as freely as we give them Flintstone vitamins.
In spite of schools with posted signs everywhere that say “drug free zones” it turns out that nearly everywhere, the most effective drug pushers are the legal ones.
Dr. Baughman, author of the new book, The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes “Patients” Out of Normal Children says that parents and educators have to stop thinking that the use of drugs is necessary.
“We’ve gone on a diagnostic frenzy and sought out a chemical means for achieving peace and quiet in the classroom. Ritalin may solve problems for schools but it’s not helping the children.”
“Right now, the diagnosis of children is subjective and behavioral and is not biological. We’ve got to change that.”
Once children are labeled as ADHD they are no longer treated as normal. And once a child is viewed as abnormal The rigorous medical research shows that ADD and ADHD simply do not exist.
“The real question is how we go about destroying the monster we’ve created. We’ve been conned into believing that evil forces reside within our children. We’ve been lulled into believing there is a collective madness
Our children act in ways that bother adults. We’ve got to now teach the adults that the solution is up to them. We know that there are sane people who are horrified at the thought of participating in a massive abuse of children.
It’s horrifying. There are over half a million children between the ages of 2 and 5 now being treated with powerful drugs for ADHD. Nobody has any idea of the effects these drugs will have on children so young.
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