Just so you all know

Pharmacies Report Shortage Of ADHD Drugs
DENVER -- There's a nationwide shortage of generic versions of two of the most commonly prescribed ADHD medications, methylphenidate hydrochloride and amphetamine mixed salts.

7NEWS checked, and we found pharmacies scattered all over the Front Range that were completely cleaned out of certain doses.

Without the daily medication, it doesn't take long for symptoms to come back

major bean wrote: ADHD. Any parent who would let their child be doped up is unloving and not fit to be a parent.

Medication advocates would argue that those children who are prescribed psychotropic drugs do in fact need them. Children with affective disturbances or attention deficits can focus better, and thus learn better when medicated, they say. Opponents protest that the efficacy and safety of these drugs have not been proven, and some, further, believe that many psychiatric “conditions” exist only as labels in the minds of psychologists. Whether or not these conditions are real, one must agree that the exceedingly high numbers of prescriptions written for children in recent years are a cause for grave concern. And they’re of concern not just to the children and parents directly touched by individual diagnoses, but to society at large. Consider the Columbine massacre and the rash of other school shootings that have rocked this country recently. As the Washington Times Insight Magazine reports, “the common link in the high school shootings may be psychotropic drugs like Ritalin and Prozac.” For example, in 1998, 14-year-old Kip Kinkle killed his parents and then went on a shooting spree at his Springfield, Oregon, high school, killing two and injuring 22. He was being treated with Ritalin and Prozac. Then there was the15-year-old taking Ritalin who in 1999 wounded six classmates in Heritage High School in Georgia, and the 18-year-old who raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl in 1997, one week after starting to take Dexedrine. One can’t help but ask whether psychotropic drugs are dangerous not just to those taking them, but also, in some cases, to “innocent bystanders.”

And there are some other basic questions people are beginning to ask as well: Do all these children need to be taking all these drugs? Are they really sick?

By far, the overwhelming majority of psychotropic prescriptions for children are given for attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In some instances, taking medicine is a prerequisite for attending school, with refusal to comply considered grounds for dismissal, or worse, removal of the child from the home by the state. This outrages Dr. Fred Baughman, a board-certified child neurologist trained at New York University and Mount Sinai, and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. Baughman feels that it’s one thing for a court to intervene and take over as legal guardian in a case where a child’s life is truly at risk, but quite another thing when psychotropic drugs are forced on children who don’t fit into the mold. For instance, Baughman says, for religious reasons parents may refuse a needed blood transfusion for a child, or they may refuse to allow treatment of diabetes—a real disease—with insulin, a real treatment. The courts may have to intervene in such cases. But courts should have no place in mandating that behavioral problems in children be treated with drugs. “There are no physical or chemical abnormalities in these children,” Baughman states. “The idea that there is is a false belief spouted by psychiatry…. For courts to intervene and to mandate such treatment, as though these were legitimate diseases or legitimate medical emergencies, is leading to tyranny over parents of normal children….When we’re talking about…so-called psychiatric disorders, none of them are actual diseases due to physical abnormalities within the child,” states Baughman.

An American Phenomenon. An important argument against the thesis that ADHD and ADD are actual conditions is that the epidemic appears to be confined to North America. The use of Ritalin and similar prescriptions is overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States and Canada. In fact, these two countries account for 96 percent of their use throughout the world, and children in the U.S. have been estimated to be from 10 to 50 times more likely to be labeled as having ADD than their counterparts in Britain or France.[xiv] In American public schools, about 10 percent of all children in grades K-12 carry an ADHD diagnosis. Europe, by contrast, has a fraction of one percent so labeled. Could the United States and Canada really be so unique in the recent drastic upsurge of this malady?

Many in the health field are calling for more research in this area. For instance, Thomas Moore, senior fellow in health policy at George Washington University Medical Center, who feels that brain damage from Ritalin is more common than has been admitted, often questions the rationale of giving Ritalin to children, stating that the chemical imbalance theory has not been established by any scientific evidence. And while the public is given information by the National Institutes of Mental Health that ADHD is neurobiological in nature, NIMH psychiatrist Peter Jensen stated in 1996, “The National Institutes of Mental Health does not have an official position on whether ADHD is a neurobiological disorder.” In other words, this agency is talking out of both sides of its mouth—not that this is an uncommon phenomenon in Washington.

Psychologist Diane McGuiness summed up the situation in 1991 by saying, “We have invented a disease, given it medical sanction, and now must disown it. The major question is, how do we go about destroying the monster we’ve created? It is not easy to do this and still save face.”

Psychiatry’s Campaign of Labeling—and Lobbying

Despite the lack of evidence supporting the existence of ADHD and ADD, many parents never think to question the teachers, psychologists, and pediatricians who have labeled their children with these conditions, or to ask about the possible consequences of routine medication with a Class II substance. Those who do express concern are reassured that the experts know best, and then often sent to CHADD, or Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorders, a nationwide advocacy group for ADHD/ADD adults and parents of children diagnosed with the disorders. The group is ostensibly an objective agency guided by the latest scientific findings. Its messages: that ADHD and ADD are legitimate diseases necessitating medical treatment, that prescribed treatments are safe, and that parents refusing to medicate their children are negligent. But there’s something that CHADD doesn’t tell its audience, and that is that the group was created and funded by the manufacturer of Ritalin—originally Ciba-Geigy, now Novartis—for the purpose of increasing sales.

In effect, CHADD is a lobbying group. And it’s a powerful one, with more than 500 chapters and 32,000 members. “Most parents are unaware that the group is funded by Novartis,” notes Dr. David Stein, author of Ritalin is Not the Answer: A Drug-Free Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.[xv] “I’ve had many of them come to my talks, only to walk out shaking their heads that they didn’t know all this stuff,” Stein says. “They’re given very biased information all along, and they become believers that they have children with diseases and that drugs are absolutely necessary, which is sad.”