Author: TomsWrite

New Australian Clinical Practice Points for ADHD Could see Children Removed from Their Parents if they Refuse to Treat their Child’s ADHD
Please do a submission to protect our children and express your objections by 28th November 2011
By the end of 2010 there were already more than 52,000 children aged between 2 and 16 on ADHD drugs in Australia. The stimulants and antidepressants used to “treat” ADHD are known to cause hallucinations, delusions, heart problems, high blood pressure and suicidal reactions.
A new and additional document has just been drafted by the panel responsible for ADHD Guidelines titled, Clinical Practice Points on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity in Children and Adolescents (CPPs). These have been written to “compliment” (not replace) the ADHD Guidelines and will also be an interim measure while the panel verify the validity of the current Draft ADHD Guidelines. The Draft ADHD Guidelines were pulled earlier this year due to conflicts of interest of psychiatrist Joseph Biederman whose work was heavily citied in the Draft ADHD Guidelines. Biederman was sanctioned after allegedly failing to report $1.6 Million in consulting fees he received from drug companies.
These CPP’s are yet another attempt to “clarify best practice diagnosis” while at the same time denying there any evidence that many proven, workable and non-harmful alternatives work and help our children. The CPPs will remain in use once the ADHD Guidelines are completed. Major areas of concern in the CPPs include:
* The CCP’s could see a Child be Removed from their Parents if They Don’t Medicate:
An extremely concerning statement in the CPPs indicates that Australia could now be following the US model where children can be removed from their parents if they refuse to give their child ADHD drugs. On page 15 of the CPPs it states, “As with any medical intervention, the inability of the parents to implement strategies may raise child protection concerns. “ Parents are the natural guardians of their child and should always have the right to consent to or refuse psychiatric treatment for their child. 1
* Pre-school Children and ADHD Drugs:
The CPPs say pre-schoolers can be given stimulants despite the fact that both the drug companies (who manufacture the main ADHD drugs, Ritalin and Concerta) and the Federal Government, say they should not be used in children under 6 because their safety and efficacy have not been established.
* What do the CPPs say ADHD is and how should it be treated?
Whilst the CPPs states there is no known cause of ADHD, that ADHD is a description rather than an explanation and there are no specific cures for ADHD; the CPPs recommend potentially dangerous stimulants as the first line treatment when pharmacological treatment is considered. 2 The CPPs say, “A holistic and multidisciplinary approach is recommended in the management of ADHD and this may include medication, psychosocial management and where appropriate education interventions. The CPPs do not recommend the many other alternatives which are non-harmful and many times have been proven effective in helping a child with unwanted behaviour issues. 3
* Complementary and Alternative Treatments are Not Recommended:
The CPP’s state, “There is insufficient evidence to support the management of ADHD in children and adolescents using: Elimination and restriction diets, diet supplementation with essential fatty acids, chiropractic treatment, homeopathy, massage, acupuncture or physical activity.” Many children have in fact been helped with complementary treatments. Please let the panel know of the children you have seen helped, or helped yourself with these alternatives in your submission. Please also send them any studies you have that show these alternatives can help children. 4
Conflicts of Interest:
* Chair of the CPPs Panel, Child and Adolescent psychiatrist Professor Bruce Tonge is currently the Chief Investigator of a $534,782 Melbourne clinical trial which includes giving antidepressants to children who refuse to go to school. 5 While there are well meaning experts on the new Committee, CCHR is concerned as Professor Tonge could already be biased as he is giving drugs to children aged between 11 and 15 for not going to school. Antidepressants have warnings for the increased risk of suicide and self harm. Truancy is not a mental illness.
* Committee member Professor Michael Khon, in 2010 said he was a member of the ADHD drug Strattera (atomoxetine) Advisory Board for Eli Lilly and has been part of an Eli Lilly study on atomoxetine. Strattera has the strongest Australian government warning, alerting on the risk of suicidality in children. In addition he has received financial support from Jansen-Cilag (makers of Concerta the most commonly prescribed ADHD drug in Australia) to attend a conference and was paid by them to prepare teaching and training material. 6
* Committee member Ms Margaret Vikingur, is the president of Learning and Attentional Disorders Society who have received unrestricted grants from Eli Lilly, Novartis and Janssen-Cilag, the makers of Straterra, Ritalin and Concerta respectively. 7
* The conflicts of interest of the Peer Reviewers of these CPPs will not be published until AFTER public consultation. 8
To Make a Submission
The correct Submission Form MUST be used or your submission will not be accepted. One is attached for your use or
Online: Log onto the National Health and Medical Research Website at: http//consultations.nhmrc.gov.au
Click on the link, ”View more information and make a submission” regarding the CPPs at the top of the left hand column. You can obtain a submission form, from here also.
Email: adhdcpps@nhmrc.gov.au
Mail: Project Officer – Draft ADHD CPPs, Strategic Partnership Section, NHMRC, GPO Box 1421, Canberra ACT 2601.
Fax: (02) 62179035
For further information contact CCHR NSW on 02 9560 0036 enquiry@cchrnsw.org.au
CCHR was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry Dr Thomas Szasz to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.
1DRAFT Clinical Practice Points on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children and Adolescents, NHMRC, October, page 15.
2DRAFT Clinical Practice Points on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children and Adolescents, NHMRC, October, pages 7, 12.
3DRAFT Clinical Practice Points on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children and Adolescents, NHMRC, October, page 4.
4DRAFT Clinical Practice Points on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children and Adolescents, NHMRC, October, page 16.
5http://www.med.monash.edu.au/spppm/research/devpsych/srp.html
6http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/adhd-conflicts-interest
7http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/adhd-conflicts-interest
8DRAFT Clinical Practice Points on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children and Adolescents, NHMRC, October, page 20.

Don’t miss the upcoming episode of CNN’s “Perry’s Principles” featuring an interview with AbleChild co-founders Sheila Matthews and Patricia Weathers!
In the two-part episode “Quick to Medicate,” airing December 3 and 10 from 7 – 8PM EST, AbleChild co-founders offer their perspective on the right to informed consent and the dangers of drugging children. The episode features interviews with a family using behavioral drug therapy and Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New Hyde Park.
Find out the two key pieces of advice AbleChild offers parents and see pictures from the interview. Check our blog for updates and information about other upcoming media coverage!

Stephane has done some research and arithmetic to validate getting the government to stop subsidies of corporations. After all, the government are just redistributing our wealth and I prefer to have that choice myself over where it goes.

There is no free lunch, and the cheap ones are not that cheap, either by Stephane Beaudin

What is the cost of a burger flipping drone? The minimal, bare survival amount a human needs? I’ve calculated this for the US, statistics are easier and faster to find, and almost all the numbers I use are from US government sources (plus, I guess a lot of the people who are going to read this will be from the US, and all the others will understand the references more easily than Canadian ones). I am calculating that this drone works 40 hours per week (which makes me an effeminate socialist to some, too bad) 50 weeks per year (what, 2 weeks of unpaid vacation per year, are you trying to destroy the economy?) and never misses a single day’s work, not even to give birth to their average 1.025 children. This drone lives all it’s life sharing a one bedroom apartment with a burger flipping spouse, except for the 20 year period where the couple raises their future burger flipping kids when they will live in a 2 bedroom apartment. This apartment’s rent will be 20% under the national average. They all eat from the USDA thrifty food plan, a bland serving of a meager 2000 daily calories based on the unhealthy food pyramid, they never get even once to taste one of the burgers they flip. They have the basic utilities, electricity, heat, at 20% under the national average. They don’t ride the bus, they have to walk everywhere they go. Our drone will however reach the average expected age of 78.7 years.

In it’s life, this drone will work 94000 hours over 47 years, from 18 to 65. It will require an average of $316600.00 in healthcare for itself and his 1.025 kids, and these kids will cost $123564.00 to educate in the public system, I am not counting daycare costs in this. Thus, what we need to figure out is how much such a drone actually costs per hour, that includes salary, some sort of pension plan, but just the payable part of it, some form of health insurance, and again, only the payable part of it, administration costs and plan provider’s profit cannot be counted in this. And paying taxes for the kid’s education, his public service footprint is actually larger than that, so this cost I am calculating is actually quite a bit low.

And the total? $9.30 per hour.

that is actually an extreme lowball estimate, I have already mentioned some of the items I am not accounting for, others include clothing, furniture and appliances, diapers for the babies and dental care, just off the top of my head.

When salary plus benefits (payable portion of benefits, remember) are under this amount, the employer is paying under the bare minimum survival cost of the resource. This means that the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 has our drone dying of starvation, homeless, but still at his grill at the age of 63. How can employers get away with that? Simple, the job is subsidized with public programs like Medicare-Medicaid and Social Security. What does that mean? If you are among the 53% of American citizens who pay taxes, the government comes to take the difference at gunpoint from your income. You are subsidizing that burger, even if you don’t eat it. Corporations use the government to steal from you so they can offer “lower costs” to you, the corporation gets to be the good guy who sells you affordable meals, but a large chunk of the cost of these meals are hidden in your taxes. On top of the labor costs they are subsidized for (that is a hidden subsidy), there are plenty of overt subsidies, notably agricultural ones that all displace the cost of the food from the price sticker to your tax form. Government gets to be the bad guy who steals your money to feed the 47% who don’t pay taxes, and this is true of almost all industries, not just food. When we know the level of efficiency of the government, you can bet the difference between what the corporation pays and the actual cost will get multiplied if they have to manage it, and that multiplied difference is going to get slapped on just one half of the population, those who pay taxes.

Next time you hear people whining minimum wage kills jobs, remember the alternative is for the government to take the difference out of your pockets. There is no free lunch, somebody has to pay, and when corporations buy resources under cost, that sucker is you.

My daughter Teal rang me this week asking what ingredients to avoid in sunscreens. the very next day I received an email promoting one that looked promising, at first glance. It had a list of natural ingredients at the top of the web site but when I read the fine print it contained Micronised Titanium Dioxide. Here is some interesting data on the difference between products at normal size being non-toxic and micronised or nano-particles (really, really small ones) being destructive to cellular health.

Cuadrilla Resources, a British energy company, recently admitted that its hydraulic fracturing operations “likely” caused an earthquake in England.

Predictably, this news quickly sent a shockwave through the U.K., the oil and natural gas industries, and the environmental activist community. And it certainly feeds plenty of speculation that the same phenomenon could be occurring elsewhere. Right on the heels of Cuadrilla’s announcement, news is spreading that the United States Geological Survey has released a report (pdf) that links a series of earthquakes in Oklahoma last January to a fracking operation underway there. Evidently, a resident reported feeling some minor earthquakes, spurring the USGS to investigate. They found that some 50 small earthquakes had indeed been registered, ranging in magnitude from 1.0 to 2.8. The bulk of these occurred within 2.1 miles of Eola Field, a fracking operation in southern Garvin County.

Martin Whitely MLA, sent me an email as follows:

The blog below was recently written by Dr Allen Frances, the psychiatrist who on behalf of the American Psychiatric Association led the DSMIV process. The blog encourages people critical of the proposed DSM5 to sign up to an on-line petition organised by several divisions of the American Psychological Association.

Martin Whitely MLA – Author Speed Up and Sit Still http://www.speedupsitstill.com

PS- For information on the proposed revised diagnostic criteria for ADHD in DSM5 see http://speedupsitstill.com/dsm-5-proposal-adhd-%e2%80%93-making-lifelong-patients-healthy-people

US Psychologists Start Petition Against DSM 5

A Users Revolt Should Capture the American Psychiatric Associations Attention by Dr Allen Frances

Originally published October 24 2011, in DSM5 in Distress http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201110/psychologists-start-petition-against-dsm-5

Several divisions of the American Psychological Association have just written an open letter highly critical of DSM 5. They are inviting mental health professionals and mental health organizations to sign a petition addressed to the DSM5 Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association. You can read the letter and sign up at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dsm5/ It is an extremely detailed, thoughtful and well written statement that deserves your attention and support.

The letter summarizes the grave dangers of DSM 5 that for some time have seemed patently apparent to everyone except those who are actually working on it. The short list of the most compelling problems includes: reckless expansion of the diagnostic system (through the inclusion of untested new diagnoses and reduced thresholds for old ones); the lack of scientific rigor and independent review; and dimensional proposals that are too impossibly complex ever to be used by clinicians.

The American Psychiatric Association has no special mandate or ownership rights giving it any sovereignty over psychiatric diagnosis. APA took on the task of preparing DSM’s sixty years ago because it then seemed so thankless that no other group was prepared or willing to do it. The DSM franchise has stayed with APA only because its products were credible enough to gain widespread acceptance. People used the manual only because it was useful.

DSM 5 has strained that credibility to the breaking point and (unless radically changed) will be much more harmful than useful. We have reached a turning point that will soon become a point of no return. A near final version of DSM 5 must be ready by next spring and all final wording will be set in stone within a year. Time is running out if DSM 5 is to be saved from itself.

Rescue attempts and pushback are coming from numerous directions and are fast gaining in momentum. The American Psychological Association’s petition was preceded by an even harsher critique by the British Psychological Society. The Society of Biological Psychiatry has wondered why we need a DSM 5. Experts in personality disorder have universally decried the proposed revisions in DSM 5. And the American Counseling Association will soon weigh in with its own statement.

Meanwhile DSM 5 has lived in a world that seems to be hermetically sealed. Despite the obvious impossibility of many of its proposals, it shows no ability to self-correct or learn from outside advice. The current drafts have changed almost not at all from their deeply flawed originals. The DSM 5 field trials ask the wrong questions and will make no contribution to the endgame.

But the DSM 5 deafness may finally be cured by a users’ revolt. The APA budget depends heavily on the huge publishing profits that accrue from its DSM sales. APA has ignored the scientific, clinical, and public health reasons it should omit the most dangerous suggestions- but I suspect APA will be more sensitive to the looming risk of a boycott by users.

Here are best case and worst case scenarios. Best case: APA opens up DSM 5 to external, independent review and only those suggestions that pass muster are included. DSM 5 becomes safe, usable, and widely used.

Worst case: DSM 5 stumbles along blindly as it has and includes most or all of its harmful suggestions. DSM 5 loses its status as a useful and standard guide to psychiatric diagnosis, creating an unnecessary and unfortunate babel of diagnostic practice and research habits. And the American Psychiatric goes broke.

The APA Trustees and Assembly have thus far been almost completely and puzzlingly passive in exercising their governance role over DSM 5. I believe they can wait no longer if they are to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to the public, to the mental health field, and to their own membership. It is pretty much now or never.