Mental Health Screening in Schools Signals the End of Parent

[Anonymous]

Obituary of Teen Screen Creator

The Washington Post
October 6, 2005  
Sequoia Fund Manager, Philanthropist William J. Ruane
Joe Holley, Washington Post Staff Writer

William J. Ruane, 79, one of Wall Street's most successful investment managers and a philanthropist with an abiding interest in education and mental health, died Oct. 4 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

He died of complications from lung cancer, according to David Poppe of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, of which Mr. Ruane was chairman. At the time of his death, he also was co-manager of the Sequoia Fund.

Mr. Ruane and partner Richard T. Cunniff founded their investment management firm in 1969 after raising $20 million from investors. Most of their customers came to them on the recommendation of Warren Buffett, Mr. Ruane's former classmate and close friend.

The company's Sequoia Fund, a mutual fund that has substantially outperformed the Standard & Poor 500 index since its inception in 1970, has been so successful that it has been closed to new business since 1982.

Mr. Ruane also served on numerous boards, including those of Geico, Data Documents Inc. and The Washington Post.

"What Bill Ruane did for The Washington Post was of incalculable value," said Donald E. Graham, chairman of The Post. "He helped with every acquisition we made during the time he was on the board and afterward."

Graham recalled Mr. Ruane as "outgoing and jovial" and as "a detail-minded investor."

"There was no such thing as a short conversation with Bill," he said. "Once he became interested in a problem, he wanted to know everything there was to know about it."

Mr. Ruane was born in Chicago and grew up in its Oak Park suburb. He graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 1945 with a degree in electrical engineering. He enlisted in the Navy immediately after graduating and was on his way to Japan when World War II ended.

In 1947, he joined General Electric Corp., where he learned that engineering was not for him. "I'm a mechanical idiot," he told Forbes magazine.

He enrolled at Harvard Business School and found his calling when a professor urged his class to read the classic textbook "Security Analysis: Principles and Techniques" (1940). Although he knew nothing about stocks, he was impressed with the approach by authors Benjamin Graham and David Dodd to financial analysis.

Mr. Ruane recalled interviewing with a Wall Street investment firm and being told that college graduates were paid $35 a week, while Harvard Business School graduates were paid $37.50. "And there you have the value of a Harvard Business School degree in 1949," he remarked this year. "Things have changed."

After receiving his master's degree in 1949, he went to work for Kidder Peabody, where he stayed for 20 years.

In 1950, Mr. Ruane and Buffett sat in on a class Benjamin Graham taught at Columbia University, where they learned that the quality of earnings was just as important as growth in earnings. Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 and recommended four years later that his partners invest in Mr. Ruane's new fund. Many of them did.

In 1999, Forbes noted that if an investor had placed $10,000 with the fund at its inception and had reinvested the dividends, he or she would have had $1.1 million that year. Today, the Sequoia Fund manages more than $14 billion.

Long interested in urban education and mental health, Mr. Ruane in 1992 "adopted" a block of East 118th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Lenox Avenue in Harlem.

Called the Carmel Hill Project, it was a "comprehensive community initiative" that involved renovating buildings, bringing in health clinics and other community service programs and providing scholarships to every child on the block so all could attend a Catholic school three blocks away. He resolved to spend whatever it took to make the block a better place.

He also funded an Accelerated Reader program for 26 New York public schools and for 19 schools in Monroe, La., as well as schools on reservations. In addition, he created TeenScreen, a nationwide organization that tests teenagers for symptoms of depression and other suicide risk factors.

Survivors include his wife, Joy Ruane of New York; four children, William Ruane Jr. of Cambridge, Mass., Elizabeth Ruane of Burlington, Vt., Thomas Ruane of Washington, Conn., and Paige Ruane of New York; a sister, Patricia Lowry of Maui, Hawaii; and four granddaughters.

At the 2005 Sequoia Fund shareholders' meeting, Mr. Ruane offered two rules of investment, borrowed from his old friend Buffett: "Rule No. 1: Don't lose money. Rule No. 2: Don't forget Rule No. 1."

[Anonymous]

I didn't see any evil in his obituary.

[bandit1978]

Many of the more serious psychiatric disorders- like schizophrenia- don't even show up until later in life

[Anonymous]

Federal Funding for Mental Health Screening of Kids
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
 
On Friday Congress defeated an amendment I introduced that would have prevented the federal government from moving forward with an Orwellian program to mandate mental health screening of kids in schools. This program, recommended by a presidential commission, has not yet been established at the federal level. However, your tax dollars are being given to states that apply for grants to establish their own programs - and a full-fledged program run by the Department of Health and Human Services is on the way.

Nearly 100 members of Congress supported my amendment. Many of these members represent Texas and Illinois, two states that already have mental health screening programs in place. They have heard from their constituents, who believe intimate mental health problems should be addressed by parents, kids, and their doctors - not the government. These parents do not appreciate yet another government program that
undermines their parental authority.

The psychiatric establishment and the pharmaceutical industry of course support government mental health screening programs in schools, because they both stand to benefit from millions of new customers. But we should not allow self-interested industries to use a government program to create a captive audience for their products. We should be especially careful about medicating children with psychotropic drugs when their brains are still developing. Far too many children are being stigmatized by dubious diagnoses like Attention Deficit Disorder, and placed on drugs simply because they exhibit behavior that we used to understand as restlessness or rambunctious horseplay. This is especially true of young boys, who cannot thrive in our increasingly feminized government schools. Sadly, many parents and teachers find it easier to drug energetic boys than discipline them.

Dr. Karen R. Effrem, a pediatrician and leading opponent of government mental health screening, makes the following points about such programs:

Parental rights under such programs are at best unclear, at worst nonexistent; Many parents already have been forced by schools to put their children on psychotropic drugs, and this surely will accelerate under a federal screening program; Screening programs do not prevent suicide; Psychiatric diagnoses are inherently subjective and based on "social constructions"; Most psychiatric drugs do not work in children; We do not know the long-term consequences of using psychiatric drugs on children; and Screening programs will be influenced by politics. Children of religious parents, for example, risk being labeled "homophobic."

Certainly there are legitimate organic mental illnesses, but that does not mean it is the role of government to subject every child to arbitrary screening without the consent of parents. Most Americans still understand that certain things are none of the government's business, even if Congress does not.

If you are a parent, do everything you can to protect your children by demanding to be notified of any screening program in their schools. As a voter, let your state and federal legislators know that you don't want tax dollars spent on mental health screening programs. If we act now, we still can prevent the federal government from creating a nationwide, mandatory program that will place millions of American youngsters into a stigmatized, drugged, mental health ghetto.

[Anonymous]

http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=22 ... FORM=CVRE4

TEEN SCRIP DRUG ABUSE SOUNDS ALARM
Jul 12, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com
by staff reports

According to a previous FMNN report ("Big Pharma Psychotropics Part of Bush School Food Pyramid?" - July 10) up to 52 million kids are now subject to mental health tests at school where they can also be prescribed powerful prescription drugs. And now, perhaps predictably, a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has announced that prescription drug abuse is a much larger problem than the use of illegal drugs such as cocaine and
heroin.

[Psychotropic Meds- 'Gateway' Drugs???]
Between 1992 and 2003, prescription drug abuse amongst all Americans almost doubled to 15.1 million. However teenagers abuse grew more
rapidly, accounting for 2.3 million prescription abuse cases. Alarmingly, the study also found that once teenagers abused prescription drugs they became two times more likely to drink alcohol, five times more likely to use marijuana, 12 times more likely to use heroin and 21 times more likely to use cocaine.

The report suggested that abuse of prescription drugs might stem from increased accessibility to the drugs. While there are a number of sources of drugs, the most prominent, astonishingly, could be the Bush Administration's TeenScreen program. When the program was initiated in 2002, large pharmaceuticals reportedly estimated an eventual $6.4 billion in profits from the taxpayer-sponsored program. Now the estimate is said to be over $8.8 billion, of which Medicaid could pay
$2.4 billion.

There was no comment from the Bush Administration on the Columbia report, nor any report that Administration was considering even a temporary pullback of its backing for the TeenScreen drug-scrip program. Drugs available via TeenScreen include Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroqual, Geodone, Depakote, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Wellbutron, Zyban, Remeron, Serzone, Effexor, Buspar, Adderall and Prozac.

-Chris Mack is FMNN's technology and media correspondent

[Anonymous]

Sean (not his real name) was an exceptionally bright, sensitive and energetic young boy. At age 8, he'd just been reunited with his mother in a new town, away from the country life he'd known. There, the family thought, he'd fare better, what with a fresh start and better access to psyche and education professionals and all.

They pegged him dead to rights. He was evaluated as a frustrated genius with impulse control problems. Sean was prescribed copious amounts of powerful stimulants. Sean sat quietly and attentively for his teachers and obediently filled in the propper bubbles on the papers when instructed to do so. The professionals deemed the experiment a success.

Sean told me about it while I was reading the evaluation papers. He remembered being hustled out the door for school in the moring, stoned out of his gord. At age 19, he'd landed up on my couch after having been booted, along with all of his personal posessions and effects, from his grandparents' home for (again) stealing their prescription drugs. So that's how we came to discuss the issue.

Around 2 years later, Sean died of an overdose. The likely cause was Xanex leftover from the day before in combination with a rather large does of methadone. Those who knew and loved him still can't be sure whether he intended to do himself in or not. There were no notes left or any other of the classic signs of having planned it. However, his whole life in recent years reads like a passive suicide.

At the funeral, there was a lot of talk and speculation about why and how and what anyone could have done or should have done or wished they had not done or said. But, of course, it was too late.

A local police, who I know from Sean's own words, had won this kid's respect and affection, gave a moving eulogy. Like everyone who loved Sean, he talked about what he might have done better and promised to redouble his efforts in the drug war as that same very kind, very decent grandma who had practically raised Sean went around offering to share her prescription anti-anxiety drugs to various grieving relatives. At first I thought she was just in shock. Then I noticed that most of the family had, evidently, taken her up on the offer.

[Anonymous]

Drugs are not the problem. Drug abuse is a symptom of a problem, very rarely a problem in itself (until later stages of addiction). There is a reason why people start using drugs, and that is what needs to be addressed. A war on drugs is equivilent to starting a war against 'coughing', with the common cold as the actual perpetrator. It's ludacris and a waste of time.

I've read too many stories about people who 'died tragically because of drugs' and the drugs get the blame. People CHOOSE to put substances in their body, and YES you can stop using drugs if you really want to.

People take medication and drugs because they want to feel better/different. This is not rocket science. If a person does not address the original reason they wanted to feel different/better, why would they ever stop using drugs? They won't. This whole scam of AA/NA crap really bugs me. It fools people to think drugs are more powerful than they actually are.

Presciption drugs are just as dangerous as 'street' drugs, although the ones making the money are considered 'legit'. Anyone notice the illegal drugs are ones you cannot patent? Hmm... interesting.

People only buy medicine if they think they are sick. This is the problem. We are not as sick as we think we are! (or are told)

[Deborah]

BIG PHARMA JUST BOUGHT YOUR DOG AND MIGHT PUT YOU IN JAIL?
Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and
Elissa Meininger
October 13, 2005
NewsWithViews.com
Excerpts

Big Pharma and its modern medicine allies are not content to simply promote products and services to humans that manage to kill 784,000 of us each year, in the US alone. They now have bought their way in to the American Veterinarian Medical Association for the purpose of controlling what kinds of products and services we provide to our animals.

In 1997, amid great fanfare, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) announced that several transnational pharmaceutical companies, along with a major animal food company had formed a ?strategic partnership? for the purpose of improving the financial fortunes of the veterinary industry as a whole. This new partnership is not just the same old corporate sponsorship at trade shows and sporting competitions for advertising purposes, this is a serious donation of $1 million or more a year plus assignment of personnel to the newly-formed National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues (NCVEI) to assist in strategic planning to renovate the veterinary business as a whole. NCVEI proudly lists its founding sponsors as Bayer, Hill?s Pet Nutrition, Merial (a joint venture of Aventis & Merck), Novartis, Pfizer, and VPI Pet Insurance. Other regular sponsors include Fort Dodge, CareCredit, and Western Veterinary Conference. A minor coincidence in this new ?strategic partnership? is that the head of AVMA, who cut the deal, now is an employee of one of the founding sponsors.

So, what do these ?strategic partners? want to do? First off, according to the 30-year-old international corporate watchdog group, ETC Group, the fastest growing sector of animal pharmaceuticals is the ?companion animals? group. According to them, most of the leading animal veterinary companies are subsidiaries of pharmaceutical or pesticide firms. The desire of these companies is to move even more deeply into the companion animal market because any drug which has already been approved for human use by the FDA, only needs cosmetic changes (i.e. new name, new color coating on the pill or a minor tweak to the formula), and voila, you have a new 20-year patent lease on life for that drug without going through the hassle of research and development, much less the expense of hundreds of millions of dollars in typical costs for creating a new drug.

Thanks to this new desire for Big Pharma to serve you, you will be glad to know that your dog now has the opportunity to be diagnosed with ?separation anxiety? so he or she can obtain a prescription to a cross-over drug first developed as a human antidepressant for obsessive-compulsive behavior and now called ?ClomiCalm?. According to PetEducation.com, and the manufacturer, Novartis, even if you opt to use ClomiCalm, you still must consult your vet or an animal behaviorist to utilize behavior modification to resolve the ?separation anxiety? issue. In other words, the drug doesn?t actually cure the problem. Furthermore, you are advised to contact your vet if your dog experiences sedation, dry mouth, increased heart rate, weakness, pale gums, or collapses while taking the drug. Emergency phone numbers to Animal Poison Hotlines are provided on the PetEducation.com website.

According to Novartis Animal Health, there are about seven million dogs in the US who suffer from ?canine separation anxiety?.

Another crossover drug manufactured by Pfizer to treat symptoms of Parkinson?s disease in humans has now been re-named and is promoted for dogs that suffer from a new disease called ?cognitive dysfunction syndrome? and other geriatric behavior problems. Another Big Pharma dogdrug now in the pipeline includes a magic potion to treat ?thunder phobia?.

Big Pharma?s first contribution to this new vet industry ?strategic partnership? was to invest in several market surveys, one called, ?The Brakke Study? and another called, ?The Current and Future Market for Veterinarians and Veterinary Medical Services in the United States?. These studies were completed in 1998 and 1999, respectively. What they found:

1. Vets don?t make enough money
2. Large numbers of women in the profession don?t make as much money as their male counterparts
3. There is a demand for more vet services in nontraditional and nonprivate practice areas
4. Delivery of services are fragmented and inefficient
5. Vets don?t know how to run a profitable business
6. THERE ARE TOO MANY VETS SO THEY HAVE TO COOK UP NEW SERVICES TO DRIVE UP THEIR INCOMES.
With all this Big Pharma ammunition, the entire North American vet industry leadership jumped on board to form the National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues. One look at NCVEI?s website revels exactly how Big Pharma has begun to reach out to control what you can do with your Fifi, Fido, and Flicka (horses are companion animals, too).

The structure of NCVEI has all the de rigueur ?working groups? to pump up the industry including a sponsoring council made up of 15 drug industry representatives who, no doubt, are well-trained in strategic planning as strategic planning is a high art for Big Pharma.

We can assume that part of Big Pharma?s interest in taking over control of the veterinary industry was prompted in order to curtail a growing interest on the part of some vets use of natural therapies and products for animals in order to meet the needs of their customers. Under the auspices of the Task Force on Alternative and Complementary Therapies established by the American Veterinary Medical Association, from 1998 to 2001, a national survey was conducted to determine how to define natural healing arts and to provide official guidelines as they related to veterinary medical practice. Current vet practices are basically the same modern medical products and services that MDs use in treating humans.

Interestingly, the results of this study include a most sophisticated understanding of the great philosophical divide between modern medicine and natural world of healing.

?These guidelines define CAVM [complementary and alternative veterinary medicine] as a heterogeneous group of hygienic, diagnostic, and therapeutic philosophies and practices whose theoretical bases and techniques diverge from modern scientific veterinary medicine. Some of these differ in preferring naturally occurring hygienic and therapeutic methods to synthetic drug treatment and surgery; some have roots in ancient or modern philosophical or religious systems; some are based on notions of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology that are not consistent with current knowledge; some are based on principles that relate to an order of existence beyond the visible, observable universe; and some are based on beliefs that contradict established scientific principles and have little or no scientific evidence of effectiveness and safety.? (Adapted from: Medicine, alternative. In: Stedman?s medical dictionary. 27th ed. Baltimore? Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000;1077.)
Concurrent with the Task Force guidelines project was the development of a model law that is now being used by vet licensing boards in all 50 states to pass brutal anti-customer DVM monopoly laws that has only one goal in mind, to protect and increase the incomes of veterinarians and their Sugar Daddy, Big Pharma.

One of the results of the veterinary practice surveys is to justify ways that vets could run more traffic through their clinics so that they can collect more fees for more services. In an array of vet industry magazines and various other means, DVMs are being told that if they hire a lot of secondary support staff such as ?vet techs?, they will be in a position to promote lab tests, preventative evaluations and the like.

Vets are also being told to be more aggressive in recommending more services and specifically capitalize on the emotional relationship the owner has for his or her pet in order to exploit it for financial gain. Yup. You read that right. Like we found with the Katrina hurricane disaster, some people have such a close attachment to pets, they won?t desert them even at risk to their own lives. So, vets are being encouraged to use this special bond as a tool to increase services the owner may not want or really can?t afford. In fact, according to a March 2005 article in Veterinary Economics, vet schools are now starting to train future vets in how to use this human-animal bond as they develop their own practices that are now considered ?family practices? not just animal practices.

This notion to gather all services under one roof under the control of veterinarians, is a basic monopoly move which the chiropractic profession was quick to spot thanks to their own monopoly fights with the American Medical Association that spanned nearly a century. Knowing that chiropractic was of benefit to animals as well as humans, the leadership of the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) contacted the American Veterinary Medical Association in 1999 to establish a dialogue. This effort was referred to the Task Force on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The result of this effort was as follows:

?The Task Force met to consider what the ACA had offered, and submitted its report to the AVMA House of Delegates. The AVMA then adopted a policy that reiterated its position that only veterinarians can perform procedures on non-human animals-unless these are performed after a direct referral from, and conducted under the direct supervision of, a DVM. This decision applies to all CAM [Complementary And Alternative] procedures, not just chiropractic.?
To make sure you understand the implications of this policy, which is being promoted in passage of new laws across the US, is that DVMs, who have no knowledge, understanding, or training in any natural healing art, have the right to tell YOU, the animal owner, what you can and cannot do to help your animal.

PLEASE LET US REPEAT, the goal here is to CONTROL YOU and what YOU can do for YOUR animal. It is not about the health and safety of the animal. Since natural healing arts are extremely safe and the practice of DVMs, as a modern medical healing art, has the potential of being extremely risky and life threatening, vets have never publicly argued safety as their justification for passage of DVM monopoly laws. They can?t.

Go to the link for the rest of the story
and Part 2

[Deborah]

(OPENPRESS) October 14, 2005 -- Six families who experienced having antidepressant drugs prescribed to their children, dramatically describe their feelings and reactions, their relationships with the medical professionals involved, and how they cope with the tasks of daily living and challenges resulting from these medications. By discussing their emotions and effects these drugs had on their family, they provide insight into this complex part of their lives. Caroline Downing (Candace Downing?s sister, who committed suicide at age 12 last year after being prescribed Zoloft) narrates the documentary in a compelling story-telling fashion, delivering a powerful performance that captures the heart and soul of the audience.

As the film unfolds, we meet a range of individuals - some shy, some outspoken. Many have experienced tragedies and their pain is undeniable, yet with strength, humor and resilience, they love, care, struggle and speak for those who are no longer with us.

Ultimately they realized that they were given false and insufficient information along with improper diagnoses that turned their worlds upside down and changed their lives forever. Only through their personal perseverance were they able to find out what really happened to their children, uncover the information that was withheld and begin rebuilding faith in their own lives.

Vividly shot with real families across the United States, it is yet a project with global implications that strikes at the very meaning of medical traditions in our modern society. The film captures a sense of the arguments in an ongoing controversy that affects millions of Americans, which ultimately asks the question if these so-called revolutionary medications can be used safely.

"There are tens of thousands of children on anti-depressants and families and people affected by these medications. The film is for them and for their families", says David Garland, co-producer of Prescription:suicide?.

Some people call them "miracle" drugs. But can they be safely administered? Can physicians - can the drug manufacturers themselves - adequately understand the risks these newly developed drugs pose to their patients? This film lets families directly impacted take the center stage. They share their stories, speaking from their hearts and it is through their experiences that an understanding is being gained that is essential, even critical, when making a decision about the use of these medications.

Prescription:suicide? was directed by Robert Manciero, a five time Emmy award winner, teamed up with Rich Samuels who specializes in youth-interest and youth-issue programs which garnered him three Emmys.

Mathy Downing, mother of Candace, along with Caroline Downing will be at the Ft. Lauderdale premiere and available for questions, comments and media interviews to support the film.

To purchase tickets for the premiere showing visit: http://www.fliff.com/2005/tickets.htm

For more details about this film and the festival visit: http://www.fliff.com/2005/films/prescriptionsuicide.htm

For direct contact with the filmmakers contact:
David Garland (co-producer)
Phone: (818) 681-2105
Email: http://www.prescriptionsuicide.com

A statement for the media by the Downing family: http://www.prescriptionsuicide.com/downingmedia.html

An interview with the filmmakers:
http://www.prescriptionsuicide.com/interviewfm.html

###
Professional Free Press Release News Wire

http://www.theopenpress.com/index.php?a=press&id=4852

[Anonymous]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/17/Opini ... _FDA.shtml

St. Petersburg Times
Time for change at FDA
A part-time FDA commissioner can't facilitate the reforms necessary at the agency, which has become a tool of the industry it's supposed to regulate.
A Times Editorial
October 17, 2005

The disappearing act at the troubled U.S. Food and Drug Administration might be viewed as an opportunity if not for the dark comedy surrounding it. First, FDA commissioner Lester Crawford slips out the back door during Hurricane Rita, claiming he has suddenly discovered just two months after his confirmation that he is 67 years old.  :lol: Then he is replaced by a family friend of President Bush, a Texas urologic surgeon who says he will be FDA commissioner and National Cancer Institute director at the same time.

Which of these two story lines is more preposterous?

Crawford's departure is certainly no loss. He has lorded over an FDA that has become a tool of the industries it is supposed to regulate. The agency seems always to be the last to know, whether it is the suicide risks associated with teens who take antidepressants, or the heart attack risks tied to painkillers such as Vioxx, or the heart devices with a propensity to short-circuit. He has so politicized the science that his own women's health director resigned in August when Crawford refused to follow an advisory panel recommendation to allow over-the-counter sale of an emergency contraceptive known as Plan B.

In Crawford's place, though, the FDA will be commanded by Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, who says he can handle the job part-time. Von Eschenbach told reporters he will keep his job at the Cancer Institute and insists he can give each a "100 percent commitment." But that math doesn't add up, which is why Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley is urging Bush to reconsider.

The other problem with von Eschenbach, and the reason drug companies are giddy about his appointment, is that he is entirely too eager to speed the approval of new drugs. Von Eschenbach brings a cancer research orientation, which may be appropriate for experimental drugs meant to help terminal patients. But in 2003 he supported an FDA initiative to streamline approval for all types of drugs, not just those for cancer treatments.

"The opportunity to name a new commissioner is a chance to take the agency in a necessary new direction," says Grassley, who has conducted oversight hearings. "Now is the time to reform the FDA's culture and reassert that the agency's top priority is what's good for John Q. Public when it comes to reviewing drugs in the marketplace." :lol:

The president seems unwilling to change that culture. Two-thirds of the time he has served in the White House, the FDA has been without a permanent commissioner. Now he thinks a part-timer will do just fine.

[Deborah]

How stomachache led to a 4-1/2 yr psychiatric nightmare for one teen.

Excerpt from lawsuit:
18. In 1997, when Kari was thirteen, she was complaining of stomachaches.  She was examined by Dr. Tammie Rogers (?Dr. Rogers?).  
19. As a result of Dr. Rogers' examination of Kari, she prescribed Paxil, an orally administrated psychotropic drug, manufactured, produced and sold by Glaxo.  
25. Almost immediately after taking the prescribed Paxil, Kari, for the first time, began showing signs of depression.  
27. Over the course of the next four and a half years of Kari's adolescence, as a result of Kari's psychiatric symptoms worsening from the Paxil, Kari was put on a panoply of psychiatric drugs including but not limited to, Zoloft, Celexa, Effexor, Neurontin, Depakote, Haldol, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Thorazine and Seroquel.  
28. At various times while on these drugs, Kari was diagnosed as bipolar, borderline personality disorder, mood disorder, and a half a dozen other serious psychiatric conditions.
29. Kari was never Substance Induced Mood Disorder (?SIMD?), the only diagnosis that was ever appropriate, considering that Kari never experienced any psychiatric condition when she was not taking psychiatric drugs.    
30. One of Kari's treating doctors, Dr. Pedro Perez (?Dr. Perez?), even noted in Kari's medical records that her confusion, inability to function and psychosis seemed to improve when the psychotropic drugs were reduced.  Yet, Dr. Perez, nor any other doctor that Kari was treated by after Dr. Perez, ever followed up on this observation to find out what Kari was like when she was not being drugged.  
31. Throughout the entire four and a half years that Kari was drugged, her parents feared for their lives and the life of their daughter.  Kari was constantly hostile, aggressive, and delusional and Kari's parents no longer recognized their innocent, happy and loving daughter.  
32. Kari repeatedly threatened her parents' lives and warned them that if they did not do what she wanted, she would hurt them.    
33. While on these drugs, Kari began to repeatedly cut and hurt herself - she sliced off pieces of the soles of her feet; she cut her lips with razors; she filed her teeth; she stuck needles in her face; she cut pieces of her checks off with nail clippers and with scissors; she cut her wrists; she cut the palm of her hands; she slashed her thighs multiple times; she plucked out her eyelashes and her eyebrows; she stuck needles in her face; she tried to hang herself with an extension cord; and she tried to get a chain saw to cut her head off.  She had to be watched constantly.  
34. At various times during Kari's treatment, the psychiatric professionals treating Kari informed Kari's family that Kari would probably be in a mental hospital for the rest of her life.
35. Kari did not go to school during most of this time, and she gained a tremendous amount of weight due to the fact that some of the drugs caused compulsive eating behavior.
36. Finally when Kari turned eighteen, after four and a half years, a doctor informed Kari's parents that Kari might not be bipolar, and they should attempt a trial of removing her from all the drugs.  
37. As Kari was being weaned off all the drugs, her parents noticed that Kari was slowly becoming to be her old self again.    
38. Today, a young girl who at one time was completely unable to read and write, who was not able to think clearly, who at times did not even know her own name, who did not know who she was or who her parents were, graduated from high school with an ?A? average in her senior year, which was the only year she was not on drugs.
39. In July 2003, Kari started a two-year college and is maintaining a 4.0 grade point average.  She was recently inducted into an honor society.    
40. Kari has scars on her body and scars in her mind that will be with her for the rest of her life.  
Read the entire petition here:
http://sskrplaw.com/adhd/JonesvRogers.html

[Anonymous]

http://depts.washington.edu/pha/students/2009/

[Deborah]

Did you just pick one on the 781 google returns? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22kari+jones%22
Someone also named Kari Jones who works in the Office of Academic and Student Programs dept at a School of Pharmacy?

Or do you know this to be the same KJ referenced in the suit?

Either way, what's the point?

[Deborah]

Parens Patriae- Latin for Country as Parent.
More on the Sex Survey from pg 5 of this thread, and Parental Rights. The Ninth Court still fails to make a distinction between Education of Sex and a Survey (that will be used, how?).

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10133

Judicial Supremacists Lash Out at Parents
by Phyllis Schlafly
Nov 8, 2005
When Hillary Clinton proclaimed that it takes a village to raise a child, many people didn't realize that she was enunciating liberal dogma that the government should raise and control children.  This concept fell on fertile soil when it reached activist judges eager to be anointed as elders of the child-raising village.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just ruled that parents' fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door," and that a public school has the right to provide its students with "whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise."

Instead of using the "village" metaphor, the judges substituted a Latin phrase that has the same effect.  Parens patriae (the country as parent) was a legal concept used long ago by the English monarchy, but it never caught on in the United States and the few mentions of it in U.S. cases are not relevant to this decision.

The Ninth Circuit case, Fields v. Palmdale School District, was brought by parents who discovered that their seven- to ten-year-old children had been required to fill out a nosy questionnaire about such matters as "thinking about having sex," "thinking about touching other people's private parts," and "wanting to kill myself."  The parents were shocked and looked to the court for a remedy.

No such luck.  We live in times when judges (especially on the Left Coast) seize opportunities to create new law and new government powers even if they have to hide behind a Latin phrase of bygone years unknown to Americans.  

The three-judge Ninth Circuit panel unanimously ruled against the parents.  One judge had been appointed by Jimmy Carter, one by Bill Clinton, and one by Lyndon B. Johnson.

The decision claimed that the purpose of the psychological sex survey was "to improve students' ability to learn."  That doesn't pass the laugh test.

The Ninth Circuit decision stated that "there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children" and that "parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed."

The school had sent out a parental-consent letter, but it failed to reveal the intrusive questions about sex.  The letter merely mentioned concerns about violence and verbal abuse, adding that if the child felt uncomfortable, the school would provide "a therapist for further psychological help."

That should have been a warning, but many parents don't realize that the schools have an agenda unrelated to reading, writing and 'rithmetic.  Anticipating the new push to subject all schoolchildren to mental health screening, the decision gratuitously stated that the school's power extends to "protecting the mental health of children."

The court didn't bother to defend the nosy questionnaire itself, and said that public school authority is not limited to curriculum.  The court made no mention of the need for informed parental consent or a right to opt out of an activity the parents deem morally objectionable.

The Ninth Circuit agreed with the lower court's broad ruling that the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of one's children does not encompass the right "to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs."

How did the Ninth Circuit circumvent "the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children," which has been U.S. settled law for decades?  The court referred to this as the Meyer-Pierce right because it was first explicitly enunciated in two famous Supreme Court cases of the 1920s, Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, and was reaffirmed as recently as 2000 in Troxel v. Granville.

The Ninth Circuit court said that since the government has put limits on parents' rights by requiring school attendance, therefore, the school can tell the students whatever it wants about sex, guns, the military, gay marriage, and the origins of life.  The judges emphasized that once children are put in a public school, the parents' "fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished."

How did the court feel empowered to put new limits on the settled law of Meyer-Pierce and give public schools the power to override parents on teaching about sex?  Simple.  The three liberal judges based their decision on "our evolving understanding of the nature of our Constitution."

Liberal judges have no shame in proclaiming their belief that our written Constitution is "evolving."  In this case, the judges bragged that the Constitution has evolved to create the right to abortion, and then ruled that the evolving Constitution takes sex education away from parents and puts it "within the state's authority as parens patriae."

Mrs. Schlafly is the author of the new book The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It (Spence Publishing Co).

[Anonymous]

Deborah, I hope when children get molested
that you don't blame the government!

It seems at least they are trying to figure
this shit out, rather than going by bias and idealism.