A columnist in an Arizona paper caught my eye today (8/8) with his piece on a court-order drugging of a 7-year-old boy. His source was USA Today, so I found the original story, and it is as scary as it sounds. According to the article, the boy had been given Ritalin "after he fell behind in the first grade and started disrupting class." (A thought: did he disrupt class because he wasn't understanding what was being taught and consequently got bored and perhaps a little scared? The question to ask, then, is why wasn't he understanding what was being taught, and not react with a knee-jerk response to disruptiveness: "let's drug him.")
Now in the second year of being on it, his parents noticed "sleeplessness and appetite loss," so they stopped giving him the drug. The school officials reported them to the New York 'protective services,' alleging child abuse (for depriving the child of Ritalin, mind you!). At a family court hearing, a psychiatrist and a pediatrician testified that the boy should stay on the drug, and so the judge ruled, although the parents were told they could get a second opinion.
The article goes on to interview a parent who also was threatened by a school district to keep her son on a mix of drugs. The school-recommended psychiatrist threatened hospitalization if her son did not continue being given Ritalin and Dexadrine, which he had been on for about three years (he was now 10, and had been on the drugs since first grade). The parent got a second opinion from a doctor who disagreed. Her son is now in a different (private) school, eating a special diet (more than likely without food additives) and with no medication for ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder).
The article ends with a report of a study recently issued by the National Institutes of Health with findings that medication improves the abilities of children diagnosed with ADHD . The last sentence quotes the lead researcher as saying that "kids who are well diagnosed with ADHD can benefit from (drug) treatment." I would iterate that the key word in that sentence is "well" diagnosed. Children who truly have ADHD can benefit, but many children are, I believe, "conveniently" diagnosed with ADHD.
Last March, part of my column was about this, and I'll repeat it again:
National Public Radio ran an interview with a pediatrician who was getting two to three "cold calls" a week from parents whose children were not in his regular care. These parents asked him to write a Ritalin prescription for the child so that the child could be readmitted to preschool.The pediatrician further described how these parents were not interested in getting at the causes of the high-energy disruptive behavior of their child, however. The doctor explained to these parents the necessity of exploring the food and behavioral habits and family history of the child and of the surrounding family. But parents were more interested in simply getting their child into childcare, regardless of the cost to the child's health.
Notably, the drugs that are being prescribed for ADHD have never been tested for young children. In fact, the NPR report interviewed a person associated with drug testing who said that it would be practically impossible to devise a protocol for testing such drugs on children. There is enormous difference between young people of an age that can understand the nature of experimental testing and small children who have no comprehension and whose parents make that decision for them. Particularly since ADHD is a non-life-threatening event.
We are using young children as testing subjects, without protocols, without any adherence to consideration of side effects. One would think that, if they are not approved for use in children under six, pediatricians who prescribe them for those ages would be subject to some kind of reprimand or, at the least, strong oversight. One would think that parents would care enough about their children not to have them take untested drugs.
The United States is running a grand experiment, unregulated for the most part, on mostly male children (statistic quoted in an article interviewing Michael Gurian, author of a number of books on children: of children diagnosed with ADHD, six out of seven are male), the final results of which won't be known for a couple of decades or so.
And just recently there was a news report of a new drug similar to Ritalin or a variant thereof, whose greatest benefit is that it need be given only twice a day. Why is that a benefit? Because children would no longer have to troop to the nurse's office at mid-day to be given their doses, thereby no longer being marked as "different" from the other kids.
Does it have to be this way? What do other countries do?
Unfortunately, Americans are so obsessed with having the instant answer to every problem and the instant cure for medical (real or perceived) problems, that the refusal to look at all the issues surrounding a problem before choosing a solution is endemic. Many desire the "quick fix" even knowing that it can be the quick way to harm. Hell, the "War on Drugs" was going to be a quick cure at least 20 years ago, and it's been a laughable (as long as you're not caught in a maelstrom involving it) and, unfortunately, a never-ending and money-engulfing joke.
More pathetically, while people preach against one kind of drugs, they preach for other kind of drugs. Just watch the advertising. Got acid reflux? Take this drug...or this drug...but don't consider that your body is telling you something about what you're eating, namely that there's some things in your eating pattern which do not work well with your body. And if you figure out what they are and change accordingly, you'll get well and save a ton of money by not buying these drugs.
One reason why I have no desire to invest in drug companies is that they are predicated on sickness and not on wellness. They make money because people live in an illness-inducing manner. They make money because our whole American culture (which we are exporting across the globe) is built on the production of toxins, which have become globally endemic, and these toxins (which include things like Yellow #5, an additive to many mass-produced foods) have to be processed by our bodies. Some people are healthy enough to successfully do so, for the most part. Others don't have that luxury...the luxury of eating organically-grown food, of living in neighborhoods which are not near chemical and other hazardous-waste producing industrial plants, of breathing clean air, of drinking and bathing in clean water.
Here again, children are our test pilots. Children's bodies absorb proportionally greater amounts of toxins than adults. Is it any wonder that the number of asthmatic children is rising continuously?
(I strongly believe that the race for the cure for breast cancer is attacking the wrong end: it should be the race for the prevention of breast cancer and other cancers, by discovering which chemicals--more than likely the organochemicals which have been developed in the past century--in our environment nudge body cells into proliferation without die-off. The gene which presumably predisposes one for breast cancer should be looked at as the gene that prevents the removal of specific toxins from the body.)
Articles regularly appear which state that the worst kind of fats to eat are hydrogenated and partially-hydrogenated fats, and yet you have to search long and hard in the average grocery store to find baked goods that have none. Why aren't we demanding that Nabisco, et al., and the local supermarket bakery use healthy fats in their baked goods? Granted that we shouldn't be eating much of the stuff anyway, but they could make them less unhealthy.
Enough ranting! I close with a note of slight hope: a 15-year-old girl wrote a column in the Denver Post this past week. She talked about the cramming of summer activities into the lives of young people: early morning swim practices, dance lessons, summer school enrichment, subject-oriented day camps, and wondered where are the lazy times, when children could just be … kids… playing in that self-absorbed but also other-absorbed way. She lamented the lack of "unscheduled moments" enjoying "simple fun and spontaneity," with such times being pushed aside for 'improvements.' She challenged the reader to "take the pressure off your own child. Let [them] play hide-and-seek a little longer…cherish [their] silly laughter."
We treat our children as little adults all too soon. There is learning inherent in play. There is no need to grow up fast, or at least, there shouldn't be. We would do well to ease back off the accelerator that is being applied to education, to work, and to our lives in general. The world doesn't spin any faster no matter how much we push on it.
Live each day as a gift and allow each day to be a gift to the children around you.
Cherie
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